A Vulnerable Geometry

Subj: Sitting on a stalled escalator at Metro Center

2012-01-26T10:27:00.001-08:00

The Thursday morning commute into the District started out reasonably well. The warmer than usual January morning was a welcome experience. As I sat on the stalled Metro Center escalator in my wheelchair listening to the approaching sirens, I thought about all the events that had to take place in order for me to be at that place at just that moment when the machinery shut down for some inexplicable reason.

The MARC train had arrived on time however the funky air surrounding the restroom compartment meant that the mezzanine area was not very crowded. Many of the restroom equipped MARC Commuter cars have been neglected as of late but the bigger issue is the frequency of breakdowns that severely delay or cancel trains altogether. This morning was a pleasant exception from the recent spate of ‘issues.’ We even arrived on the 13 Track where we at least have half a platform. The other half of the width is cordoned off for long neglected overhaul. This arrival and ease of train deboarding meant that I was on schedule but unusually ahead of a typical day in the life of a DC commuter.

Down in the Metro Rail station at Union Station, the fubars were manifest in great numbers. My BB phone was not registering emails so I had been without the heads up that the Red line trains were being delayed by yet another cracked rail. At my count this was the 5th occurrence in less than 2 months. I sent a Tweet that “At #WMATA, I guess we have discovered just how long the steel rails last. 5 cracks in 2 months. A pattern emerges.” My progress toward the place and time of what would euphemistically become known as the “January Escalator Incident” among my friends and colleagues was slowing down.

The first train through the station was so crowded that I passed on taking it. It seemed to be having door troubles, too. The next train was mostly empty so I got on it. Then we sat there for a few minutes due to the backlog of trains ahead of us, including the one I skipped that was now having continued issues at Judiciary Square. All along the line the delays were building due to the rail crack up ahead. One announcement was that a train had broken down in the single track section and was being assisted. What should have been a 10 minute ride to Metro Center was taking half an hour. My decisions to wait on the next train placed me temporally about three minutes behind where I otherwise would have been. The moment I rolled off the Metro Center escalator would have been about three minutes before it stopped for its spurious reason. That is assuming that it stopping had nothing to do with my actual presence. I don’t think it “had it in for me.”

When we finally arrived at Metro Center, I found that the west end platform up escalator had been enclosed in plywood walls for a long term long overdue overhaul job. If the overhaul schedule had been one day later, I would have exited the station in that direction making for a completely different morning experience. Incidentally, this means that the down unit will be stationary during that entire period. The night before, the down escalator was stopped even though it was recently returned to service after its multi-month repair. My commute options were being greatly curtailed. Using a wheelchair in the DC Metro system is a challenge every day even when all the equipment actually is operating.

I knew that the only street elevator at Metro Center was out of service for its long overdue, long neglected overhaul. Had I moved slower through the crowd in the station, or had met one of my commute acquaintances such as Casey or Mary and lingered a few seconds while talking, I might have been met with a stopped escalator when I first arrived. Needless to say, I would not have used it. I exited the system and looked to see if that one escalator was operating on this morning. It was. The other one was torn down and midway through its overhaul job. The third unit had long ago been replaced with granite steps in the first austerity program of WMATA. Actually back in the mid 1990s three technicians had been killed while working on this particular set of escalators. They were crushed when someone re-energized the motor units while they were in the machinery.

The traffic was light and I took a hold of the hand rail and started up ascent to the street. When about half way to the top, a bell rang out and the moving stairs eased to a stop. My reaction was to say, “I can’t F***ing, believe this.” All of the micro-delays and lack of others all added up to the fact of my being halfway up that stair when the motor actually quit.

The woman who had been about 10 feet further along looked back at me. She came close and asked if there was anything she could do. I said she could go tell the station manager. She went back down and made the report. The last I saw her she was walking up the granite steps.

This is where the story gets interesting. An escalator technician arrived and insisted on holding me in place. I told him I was able to hold on myself for as long as in didn’t fall asleep. He said he’d continue to hold on. I wanted them to just restart the steps but he refused saying it was against the safety protocols to restart an escalator with a customer on it. He said the Fire Department personnel would decide what to do. I argued that them carrying me off was far more dangerous than restarting the unit with me on it and him holding on as he was. My logic did not sway his opinion. We waited. If he had not arrived on the scene, I would have gotten tired of waiting and would have done what I did when DC’s only earthquake shook the city and elevators all over the place went into emergency mode. I would have bumped and bounced down the steps one at a time until I was at the bottom. Then I would have tried a different exit. His presence added to the unnecessary hoopla of the day.

I heard the sirens gradually getting louder and closer. Soon there was a host of canvas coated men all standing at the top of the escalator. They walked down and we entered into a discussion about what to do. They wanted to carry me down into the station so I could use the elevator. I pointed out that it was out of service for repairs as were many of the other escalators in this station. That was why I was right there right now. “I will be stranded in the station if you carry me down. Even the Trains are snafued today.”

We consulted on the placed to hold and lift and the placed to avoid. One man produced a nylon strap and we looped it through the frame at placed that were string and would not fail. Thence it was onward and upward to the street. That part took all of about 2 minutes.

While I provided my identification information for the report, the technician turned the key and restarted the stairs without incident. I pointed to them and said, “see there. This was all a big honking nothing turned into a big deal.” I confirmed that I had no residual concerns and went on my way to the office. I pondered what I should do for next few months while they work on the entrances at Metro Center that I use.

Post Script: Some people would say I am an optimist, which I am. Things could have been worse. Really it could have been. This incident could have happened on the next day, Friday, when the District had torrential rains until after 9:30. That Metro Center escalator is one of those ones that are outside under the open sky. Twenty minutes of sitting in the pouring rain would have made the events a whole lot different.

It's always Something

2012-01-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

It's always Something

Roseanne Roseannadanna's dear old dad was astute in his observation. The first week of January 2012 brought a significant number of concatenated failures of the Maryland MTA rail system and the WMATA system in DC. It is bad enough when one thing goes wrong but what it is a series of fubars that culminate in massive delays, one can only fall back on that saying, "It's always something."

After the long breakdown of a MARC commuter train in the afternoon of the last workday of 2011, a Friday to boot, the entire region seems to have succumbed to multiple daily problems. It that first short workweek of January WMATA experienced three cracked rails and a pedestrian was hit on the tracks. Multiple trainsets were disabled due to one reason or another and the elevators and escalators continue to be out of service for the continuing program of renovation. Each incident by itself is bad enough, but when one event leads into another and another, one day can become quite the challenge.

For the many thousands of MetroRail customers who walk into and out of the stations on good feet, have strong hearts and limber joints it is only the trains not moving on schedule that tax their patience. Stalled escalators may be a nuisance with the backlog of fellow commuters queued to walk up or down the stationary stairs, but a few minutes of time will remedy the situation.

For those riders who have difficulty walking the stairs, getting into and out of stations can be a daunting task especially when surrounded with already anxious delayed fellow riders whose rude attitudes rival only their pushy insistence in getting to their job or the transit connection back home.

Then there are the users of wheelchairs, walkers and other mobility devices that make using transit possible at all. Working elevators and escalators are just as important a part of the trip to work or home as is the Red Line trains having doors that work and track signals that allow the trains to move safely from one station to the next.

January 4th was one of those exceptional days when many things went wrong with this one person's trip home to Baltimore. Much to the distress of many WMATA Station Managers and Transit Police Officers, I depend on using working escalators to enter and leave Metro stations even though I use a wheelchair. They sometimes get it in their minds that what I am doing is a danger to myself and others on the escalator. That they fail to understand is that after 16 years of entering and leaving the Metro Center Station via escalator, my ride count exceeds 16,000 events. With that much experience behind me, I think and special danger is long extinguished. There remains, of course, the dangers that everyone who rides an escalator in the Metro Rail system. It could stop, it could throw them off at the bottom. It could try to eat their shoes, loose clothing or unsupervised children. One could get their iPod or Smart Phone ripped off by a fast moving pickpocket. They could be knocked over by an anxious customer who is late for a meeting.

On this Wednesday, I headed for the west entrance only to find the down escalator stopped. My trip to the south entrance found a similar condition in effect along with the center unit barricaded for repairs. The west entrance had no functioning units. I resolved to go to the north entrance and use the elevator, since I already knew the one escalator to be under repair while the other served as a stationary staircase. WMATA had taken the street elevator out of service for several months for a major overhaul. On my way back to the west entrance to try for the D6 circulator bus, I stopped at the top of the escalators. I prevailed upon a woman to go ask the Station Manager if the machine could be restarted. This Manager was helpful and got it running for me.

I already knew that the platform level escalator was torn apart for overhaul and that I had to go to the wrong side platform and then cross over if the other end pair of escalators were both working.

Failure Two

All the while I was trying to get into the station, the same train sat at the platform waiting for authorization to proceed do to trouble ahead. It sat there all the while I was traveling to the far end of the platform and crossing over and back down. It sat there for another 10 minutes before moving on. A woman standing near to the door where we would both be getting out at Union Station kept noting the time and her urgency to get to her 5:10 MARC train.

Failure Three

It was odd that the 438 train departing at a scheduled 5:20 was on the 13 track. Usually they park it on the 16 track and make everyone climb the steps due to the low-level pavement. I even joked with the conductor about our not having to set up a lift for me to get on the train.

A bunch of the Gang was there in our accustomed car at the 2nd car position. We sat. We talked. Soon we wondered when the train would pull out. Five-twenty came and went but we have been used to that happening without dire consequences to follow. This day would be different. At about 5:30 we got the first PA message. We would be delayed due to mechanical problems. Heck, we knew THAT. What we wanted was when we were going to move. One woman was going to miss her league bowling start time. Others were going to miss picking up children at daycare with a penalty.

After the 5:25 train had pulled away we got the update that our train was not going to pull out and we needed to move over to another train. First they gave us a high level platform then they took it away. We had to move over to the 8 track that was low level boarding and I would require the lift. I had decided to go buy dinner at Union Station and catch an even later train. The conductor, however, informed me that "they have the lift all ready setup and waiting for you over on 8." I didn't want to disappoint them or raise confusion if I didn't show up, so I went. About half of the Gang regrouped in the 2nd car where they had set up the lift.The trip was slower than usual after a very late departure. We arrived about 50 minutes late at BWI and there was a massive rush to get out of the garages.

Commuting has become an adventure, and remains so.

#1 Elevator

2011-12-07T14:18:00.000-08:00

The office building I work in has a bank of three elevators. Normally one presses the call button and one of them soon arrives and you get in and go up to the suite or down to the Lobby and that is it. Most times it is a solitary ride unless it is lunch time and a group of us leave and return together after going out to the same lunch spot for whatever we chose to buy that day. Occasionally there is someone to hold the door for to share the ride up to various floors. On the way down at the end of the day more that one person has the same idea for when to leave work for the day.

On this particular day I met a coworker as she returned from dropping mail in the Lobby mail bin. I pressed the hall call button and waited the requisite amount of time for one of the three units to rise to our 10th floor suite. This day the #1 and the # 3 car arrived nearly simultaneously. My first thought was 'this is odd.' However when Stephanee stepped out of the #1 car, I realized that it was a coincidence that she arrived from the Lobby just as the #3 arrived at my call. Since she was there I commented that both cars arrived and I used the one she came out of. My choice was a 50/50 one but weighted on the #1 by a social factor of talking with a coworker at that moment.

On the way down the car stopped on the 7th floor to pick up Brian as he was leaving. I did not know Brian just then, but circumstances would soon change that. We did the usual process of ignoring each other than to briefly nod to acknowledge each other. He continued to view his cell phone screen as the door closed and we proceeded down to the Lobby.

Before we reached that elevation, the car stopped abruptly just as we were expecting to stop gently at the Lobby. I commented, "that was a rather abrupt stop." Brian looked up and noted that the floor indicator still showed "2". I continued my comment with, "that's not good."

We began to speculate whether the ride would soon be completed and whether the elevator car would reset and continue. It didn't. The lights stayed on so we were not left in the dark stuck in a small space. None of the panel buttons would light when pressed. I tried the obvious "door open" and "door close" just to be sure. The red emergency indicator light kept flashing and beeping at irregular intervals. It read "Fire Emergency Indicator Retuning to Lobby Level". We did not believe that report. We could hear the other cars moving up and down as we pondered our next moves and fate.

Brian rang the emergency bell to try for the lobby guard's attention. I reached for the telephone box to see if it actually worked and if some one would actually answer. Operator 54 answered and I provided the rundown of our situation. "Colorado Building, Car #1, two people, no crises other than we are bored and really want to get home." Op 54 said he was calling the service people to come get us out. He suggested we call back every 3 to 5 minutes to keep them informed.

This is when I learned Brian's name. We began exchanging basic information about what we do, how long we worked in the building. That such stuff. I told him that one of my prevalent anxiety dreams involves elevators that don't do what they are supposed to do and do weird things that are not. They do things like go sideways and diagonally. The won't stop on the floor I want. I can see the rickety tracks and funky cables. They will go down below the last floor and become subway trains or run on train tracks until they emerge into the daylight and run along rainy streets until the rusty tracks disappear in the woods. For me this is a reoccurring theme. He said, "this will probably add a lot." I agreed.

The cell phone service was non-existent in that small metal car, but SMS and email would get out on a lower power comm channel. Brian reported that there was no data service for browser connectivity. I started emailing my colleagues on the company group address. The Subject was "Party in the #1 elevator tonight." Msg: "It's been nearly an hour here in #1 waiting on the ele-tech. Maybe I can just stay over tonight *sarcasm*"

That message elicited a half dozen responses:

In our own dear sweet Colorado Bldg?
Are you alright? ==>Yes. But no music or beer. Tech is on the roof now.
R u in our building? ==>Yes ==> Take tomorrow as a work at home day-----minus the hours you're waiting!!! ==> Still in the 'vader at 1341 as of 5:40. I'll be sure to send the all clear when freed.
In our building? ==> Yup. Somewhere between the Lobby and 2. Techs are working on it. ==> Great way to end the day. Hang in there.
Are cocktails being served? ==> The band is playing '80s covers and room is getting hot.

While the email dialog was going on so was an SMS conversation with one of the guys from the 5:20 Marc train. He was checking on whether I was going to be there because the Conductor was waiting for me. I inferred that that meant the train was on the 16 Track and the Conductor needed to use the lift. I asked if it was Track 16. He replied that it was 16 and at the far north end. The group I usually ride with also keeps the seat up for where I will park my wheelchair. They defend it against people who want to sit there. I try to let them know when I won't be there so they don't get into needless arguments and the Conductors don't wait when I won't be there. I made sure to tell them that Wednesday and Thursday I would not be there for various reasons.

When the first hour mark arrived so did the ele-techs. We could hear them but no one was checking on our status. Since we are both okay, we did not worry about that. Brian pondered the prospects that if they could not get the car to move what would they/we do? I suggested that they could drop us a line through the ceiling hatch and pull us up. We agreed that that would be a huge rescue effort that probably would not be needed.

I told Brian about the BWI elevator history with the 3 or 4 times the Anne Arundal Fire Department had to pry the doors open to get people out. I also pointed out that transit system elevators must have visibility panels to see in and see out. He said that was a good idea because he has been in the Metro late in the evening and was not interested in riding with some of the people who were also there.

Then after about an hour and a half the car settled to the lobby level but the door still did not open. I pressed the door open button and voila – the lobby and a rush of fresh cool air blew in. I reported our status as "Free at last free at last…" and "5:51 and in the Lobby"

Then responses:

I was afraid they were going to have to cater dinner. ==> Through a Straw... On the Red Line now taking my chances there.
I asked about it on my way out and they said you weren't the only one in there. I hope it wasn't traumatic! ==> One other guy from the 7th floor was there. We were in good spirits for being significantly delayed getting home. The phone worked and the central dispatch folks were there. Now on the 6:20 train with 5 seconds to spare. No time to dwell at the Center Cafe.
Where were you? Where was elevator? BWI? Union Station? Our lobby? Sounds bad wherever? ==> Left end elevator in the Colorado bldg, you know, the wonky one. Stephanee had just come up in it from dropping mail. She got the elevator. I got the shaft. I'm home now with a DVD and a Long Island Iced Tea, feeling no pain.

After getting out I had to go right back up to the suite for the restroom before embarking on the remainder of my trip home. Except for all the rain, there was no further fubars.

My last messages on the events of the day were: "just came from being stuck in a stalled elevator in the Colorado office building for nearly a hour and a half. Managed to catch the 6:20 MARC after an uneventful Metro ride to Union Station. It remains to be seen if there are any other buggaboos between here and my livingroom." And "No bugs in transit and wound up in my living room with a DVD and a LIIT. Movie was fair the LIIT awesome." This day too passed into foggy recesses of days that are done.

The Undiscovered Lie (Part 98)

2011-11-09T06:49:00.000-08:00

The Undiscovered lie takes down yet another great American icon, Joe Paterno. He did his duty to report the abuse he was made aware of, but failed to follow up when nothing was done. Therefore he is not liable for criminal indictment, but the court of public opinion has him signed, sealed and delivered into his permanent retirement. He, himself committed no crime, but now after years of allowing criminal activity to continue, he is the bum. He was perceived as a great man for decades until... the Undiscovered Lie broke him. Now his reputation, the reputation of Penn State, its football enterprise are all forever tarnished.

The Undiscovered Lie makes its impacts even after decades of being undiscovered. Herman Cain is just now realizing that what he did many years ago have followed him into his Presidential aspirations. There is no way that enough Americans will overlook the alleged actions, and particularly his reactions to the accusations. He doesn't have the poise and grace under fire to stand up to the onslaught of questions and further revelations for accusers who purported are revealing the Undiscovered Lie. If he cannot stand up to the media scrutiny he certainly cannot stand up to the pressure that the POTUS will have to endure. Just ask Mr. Obama.

When will the Riot Police Realize The Nobody is Rioting?

2011-11-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

The #OWS protesters purpose is to speak out, be arrested, bailed out and come back to speak out some more. They are NOT there to be beaten, gassed, shot at, run over, body-checked, slammed to the ground, knelt on and dragged. On the other hand, the police officers ARE there to beat, gas, shoot at, run over, body-check, slam to the ground, kneel on and drag away people who are there to speak out against the disparities that embody the economy, wealth and power of this nation. Just look at the way each side is dressed and what implements of destruction they wield. One has placards with WORDS and the other holds batons and guns. One side is protected by the Constitution & parkas while the other is by rubber padding and plastic shields. Just who afraid of whom out there? Don't read this if you already have yours and are not worried about losing it.

Wall Street an Abusive Parent?

2011-10-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

Peoples' relationship with banks and Wall Street is like that of a child and abusive parent. The child just wants the pain and abuse to stop but doesn't want the parent arrested. If the parent is arrested, the child risks losing his home and ending up in foster care. The child is completely dependent on the abusive parent and must turn to him or her even though the abuse will continue. The parent knows the child is totally dependent and subject to whatever rules are set forth. Sometimes the abused child propagates the abuse and some times the child turns on the parent with violence. This is the hazard of being abusive. People who 'know' the parent all say that it is impossible that the child is being abused or has any right to complain. They blame the ungrateful child. As the child reacts more, eventually even his playmates get in on the harassment after listening to their parents talk about the unruly child. It is all a downward spiral into intractable failure.

Debriefing the DC Earthquake

2011-08-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

Debriefing the DC Earthquake

I was surprised as was everyone when the ground rippled and the buildings shook. Being in DC and mere blocks from the Whitehouse some first thoughts were "Not Again." While sitting at a desk or up getting copies made or coffee poured one has no idea of the width and breadth of the event. Tenth floor suites make observing the street a difficult task. There was no immediate telling of how narrow or extensive the unknown event was. An explosion typically would be of limited radius. A building fault would be contained in the immediate area of the building. An earthquake on the other hand affects whole cities, counties and regions. As we now know the seismic waves traveled from Richmond, Virginia up into Massachusetts and west into the Midwestern states.

The shaking of the ground and the swaying of the buildings prompted many people to leave their office suites and congregate on the sidewalks outside their buildings' doors. Actually, that is a poor place to stand after an earthquake. Many other people choose to remain inside and wait for information about what had happened. Yes, it was an earthquake. No, there was no significant damage. There were no collapsed buildings or debris strewn streets. This doesn't mean the streets remained clear and passable.

The throngs of office-workers now aimlessly milling about on the sidewalks made walking on them very difficult. Most people were talking with each other or trying to make cell phone calls and were not very cognizant of their surroundings. They were focused on distant matters, listening with ear buds and not paying attention to anyone who was trying to get from one end of the block to the other.

Not long after the mass egress of the office buildings came the second flow of humanity. People who drive their cars into the District and park in the garages beneath the office building began to pour out onto the streets. There they stagnated and created a gridlock by not honoring the traffic signals that were still operating. They did not honor the traffic policy of reverting an intersection to a "Four Way Stop" when the lights go out entirely. Each driver contributed incrementally to his/her own delay and to the many more thousands of bus riders who in the absence of so many automobiles would have made the trip much faster. Fortunately this was not a massive destruction event. Fortunately we all did not need to evacuate the city in a hurry, although a lot of people seemed to think there was a reason.

The MetroRail system was brought to a stop due to the unknown conditions of the tracks, signals and station roofs. When tentative service was restored, people mobbed the trains. The densely packed commuters on the platforms made a sea of humanity that was impounded by the lack of trains to move them out. The first train at Metro Center arrived already fully packed. Still people pushed to get on. The next two trains arrived nearly empty. Those who waited or had to wait had a much easier time getting on the train and on their way.

The D6 shuttle bus that goes passed the Metro Center entrance on the west side had been delayed for about 30 minutes before arriving from the K Street area. A man sitting in the bus shelter said that the D6 had to get out of the K Street area and "it's probably a big mess up there." K Street is the big Lobby Firm area of the city. There is a higher concentration of parking garage spaces up there for all the wealthy lobbyist-types. The D6 finally arrived with a nearly full load. It inched along in the gridlocked streets taking 40 minutes to go the distance to Union Station that usually takes about 10 minutes by subway.

Car drivers ignored the attempts of the bus to pull over to the curb to take on and discharge passengers. Cars parked at the curb made the going very slow when the bus had to change lanes to go around. Additional drivers emerging from their underground lairs intensified the slowness of the trip to Union Station by bus. A woman on the bus pointed out that all the bike rental racks were empty. People peddled passed the bus making faster headway than either the cars or the bus. Pedestrians were moving far faster that the vehicles too.

At Union Station they closed the building for a short time due to small chunks of plaster falling from the vaulted ceilings. MARC, VRE and Amtrak services were all suspended while an assessment was completed. Once the building was reopened and the hopes for commuter train rides were rekindled passengers mobbed the gate to try for a space on the first trains out. Scheduled trains were departing about 1 hour later than the schedule. The first MARC train out took 2 hours to make the 35 run up to the BWI Airport Rail Station. The next train departed about an hour late and took 90 minutes. By 7:40 the 7:40 train departed on time, with plenty of seats available and took the customary 40 minutes to reach BWI.

The Center Café had plenty of seats available, beer on tap, wine and liquor, and a full menu of food items for wise commuters who chose to be patient and wait for the first flush of humanity to dissipate and make the remainder of the day a pleasant journey with interesting company.

A Metro Police Officer and the Escalator

2011-08-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

A Metro Police Officer and the Escalator

First let me say that the officer in this posting was very polite and officious. In my 16 years of using the Metro Rail system in DC and particularly while riding escalators using a wheelchair, I have been approached only a dozen times by Station Managers, an escalator tech or two and only two Police Officers. On the other hand, 16 years times 250 workdays, times 2 rides up and out in the morning and 2 rides down and in the evening each day equals 16,000 escalator rides on the DC Metro system alone. This introductory information should put the remainder of this posting in proper perspective.

The Police Officer followed me onto the Metro Center South entrance escalator to tell me it was dangerous to ride it with my wheelchair. I am always facing up the incline regardless of the direction of the stairs. I saw him step on and come to the step above me.

The ironic part of this story is that he and I would not have met this day except that the West entrance lower level escalators to both tracks were stationary. I discovered this only after going down to the plaza level on the one escalator that was going down from G Street at 14th. Fortunately the other side was going up and I could get back out to the street.

"You know we have elevators for this."

"Yes, it's on the far side."

"This dangerous."

"You're new at this. What you have to know is that I have been riding Metro escalators for 16 years, every day twice a day."

"If you would fall you could get killed."

"I could also get killed crossing the street to get to the elevator or by getting shot by someone who is over-reacting to the situation."

"You should use the accommodations that are provided. This equipment was not designed for this."

"I think there is nothing wrong with this way." We reached the bottom and I rolled smoothly off and turned to go to the fare gates.

"Well have a good day."

"Thanks." I went on my way and he made the return trip to the street. I thought about all the times that Metro escalators and elevators have been out of service and I have had to make some accommodation to get to work and more importantly, back home.

Another Way to Make MARC Delay

2011-08-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

Another Way to Make Delay

Aug 10, 2011. The BWI Rail Station platform got busy just before the 8:03 train pulled in to the station. Back along the platform sat two other passengers with wheelchairs. I knew this would be a busy morning. My jaded attitude made me believe that we would arrive on the 16 Track. The 16 has no high-level platform and requires the conductors to position a lift to get passengers with wheelchairs off the train at Union Station. My early assessment was well founded.

Due to constrained space, the three of us were in two different cars. I was at the head end of the train in an older single level car. The other cars are bi-levels. This fact will be important later. As usual the first car attracted a significant number of people who will stand in the aisle. This morning my Car 5 buddy, Trish, was with me and stood nearby as other passengers dragged their wheelie-bags across my feet.

At 8:42 we arrived at Union Station and on the 16 Track as I had figured. The passengers of the fist car were taking an inordinate amount of time to file out of the train due to the both the required use of the steps and the fact that the outer door did not open. Two cars full of passengers had to exit out one door and down the steps. I said good bye to Trish and a couple of others whom I know. Soon I was he only one still waiting to get off the train.

The Conductor, Alice, soon poked her head in the far doorway and said that they would be there shortly after handling the other two people who needed the lift. She came up and keyed the door to open it. It didn’t open. Repeated attempts at the key panel failed to open the door. The door mechanism inside the car could not be activated to open the door. After awhile another Conductor, Warren, arrived and said that in Baltimore “they locked out the door because it was not opening properly.” He did not know exactly what had been done, but it was not operational.

A train mechanic stopped by and boarded the train when he saw Alice’s bag sitting on the ground by the door. He was checking on her and that unusual situation. He worked on the door for a while, too. I told Alice that because the inter-car passage was from a single level car to a bi-level car the doorway was too narrow to pass my wheelchair. I suggested that sometime another conductor opens the door on the 15 track side of the train and I get out that way. Warren tried to do that but the electrical substation equipment and a heavy cart were in the way and there was insufficient width to turn a lift to get to the door.

Car 7747 left side door. After about 10 more minutes the mechanic had gotten the stuck door half way open. It kept hitting something inside the door pocket and reclosing. With a few more tweaks and twists, the door finally opened. After 20 minutes I was on my way to work. As Warren poured sweat in the humid DC morning and cranked the lift down to track level, I told him that what MARC lacks in good reliable equipment they make up for with good personnel. Well almost. The personnel is good, but the equipment situation and the track assignments are huge problems. The yard controller directs trains in a manner that is convenient for the railroad and fails to address customer needs and comfort. The factor that is most disturbing is the fact that the door was purposefully disabled and was a disaster in the making had there been a need to evacuate the train. Fortunately such emergencies are rare, but they do happen. Newspapers are full of stories of nightclubs and other venues that lock and chain doors to keep gate crashers out only to have dozens of people trampled, crushed or burned trying unsuccessfully get out.

Today remained a good day.

Stormy Morning, Center Track at BWI Rail Station

2011-08-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

Most people who travel through the BWI rail station in the valley below the BWI airport on a daily basis have at one time or another had to board or exit a train on that infamous center track. For them it is a nuisance that makes them queue up to walk to the far end of the platform and wait to walk down the steps there and up on to the train.

For the commuter who uses a wheelchair or is otherwise unable to negotiate the steps, the train that dwells a mere 10 feet away might as well be on the far side of the Grand Canyon. Actually being on the far side of the Grand Canyon would be far better because the view would be spectacular rather than this dreary morning. It is just another day in the life of a long-term commuter. BTW, I-95 had the two left lanes blocked this same morning due to an accident.

Although this location is not WMATA, per sa, Metro Fail riders were not spared the train malfunction at Fort Totten this morning that backlogged rail traffic to and from Shady Grove once again. The entire Metropolitan DC-Baltimore region is in failure mode and in need of major infrastructure improvements. Particularly in this time of nobody wanting to pay a tax to keep America on the move, and Congressional Freshmen all wrapped around the axle about not raising the debt limit, travel will get worse. Even as WMATA tries to overhaul its aging hardware, the money is getting pulled back by legislators who fail to see the Equals Sign in the equation.

Just Another Day At Metro Center Station

2011-07-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

July 21, 2011 9:02 AM

This will be the worst year for DC MetroRail riders. Two factors are converging to create headaches and backaches. First, the entire system is older than it ever has been (35 years in most places.) Second, they have so many Elevators and escalators shut down to overhaul them. This premier subway system has never gone through a major overhaul in its short history. New York, Boston and Chicago and many similar systems have been built over a period of 100 years or longer. They have seen the ups and downs of service quality while never having to have the entire system be the same old age.

The center escalator was barricaded for imminent repair work. The one on the left was a "down" and the one on the right was stopped. The plaza was packed with hundreds of morning commuters.

Today's Commuter Hero

A bold commuter pushed aside the barricade and ran up the center unit. A flood of delayed commuters quickly followed him up .

In a few minutes everyone was gone. The Station Manager tried to restart the stopped unit without success. Just another day in the live of a DC commuter. When did commuting become an adventure?

The Ironies Metro Fubar

2011-07-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

The Weather Personalities on TV were warning us all of the Killer Heatwave that was moving eastward across the nation in Mid-July. DC had not yet seen the peak temperatures that were to reach over 100 degrees. That notwithstanding the rail infrastructure in the region was already being stressed beyond it abilities to operate reliably.

MetroRail operations had suffered several single-tracking events due to rail misalignment and other systems failures. HVAC in some rail cars had failed and the summer tourists were making the cars extra crowded. MARC service had already experienced three 1-hour long afternoon delays on its Penn Line in July by the 20th.

MetroRail stations have been severely impacted by a major effort to overhaul its hundreds of aging escalators and elevators. At many locations where one escalator is being torn apart and rebuilt, passengers must walk the other stationary unit in both directions at the same time. Few people realize it, but they have the transit accessibility standards to thank for 40-inch wide escalators whet to people can actually pass each other in opposite directions. Just look at most private building escalators to see that most are only 24-inches wide. Those people who are unable to navigate the stationary steps with their bags, their baby strollers, bad knees and hips can thank the radicals who protested and sued WMATA to have elevators in every station not just the originally planned 1-in-3 scenario.

July 20th my afternoon commute started out relatively ordinary. I already knew to avoid the Metro Center West Entrance because the platform escalator would most assuredly be stopped. My daily commute requires the use of escalators while using a wheelchair. I freaks out some people but they have no idea that I have been doing that ride nearly every day for 16 years. The number of time I use a Metro escalator now tops 12,000 times.

My irritation with the state of MetroRail station hardware is more oriented with the escalators not working than with elevators not working. After all there is only one elevator at most stations to get anywhere. There are usually two or more escalators that all have to be stopped in order to reach the fubar status: You can't get there from here.

This particular afternoon the humidity was 100% and the temperature hovering around 95. I got to the Union Station train platform to find a barricade across the elevator door. The adjacent escalator to the left was one of the one that was being rebuilt. The one to the right was the two-way path that had a hundred foot queue waiting to get up. Even the people who were merely reluctant to walk the steps were doing so.

I turned around to go the far end of the station. The pair of escalators there were both stopped. The single one beyond them was also stopped. The only way out of the station was by rail car. The Station Manager told me I had to go to New York Avenue to get the shuttle back. I boarded the next train outbound to New York Ave. When there, that Station Manager knew nothing about the Union Station elevator outage or a planned shuttle bus. His call to Operations yielded the instruction that Judiciary Square was where they were going to stage the "bus bridge" back to Union Station.

I went back up to the platform to wait for the train. The Station Manager came up and said I had to look for the D6 bus because they hadn't gotten the shuttle set up yet.

I arrived on the street across from the National Building Museum just in time to miss the current D6 bus. But now the butterfly effect was setting in. The irony of fubars was about to kick into high gear. All I wanted to do was get up from the platform to the mezzanine of the station, a mere 25 feet of elevation and catch my accustomed 5:20 MARC train back to Baltimore.

Another Metro rider using a power wheelchair also needed to get back to Union Station. She was looking for the special shuttle. I knew the D6 bus would do the trick. We both boarded the bus after the driver clears the securement seating areas for our wheelchairs.

In a few minutes the bus was sitting across from Union Station ready to discharge passengers and the two of us. They who wanted to get off did and the driver began to deploy the lift. It stopped and stuck in the nearly down position and would not budge. He tried over and over to make it go. It didn't. He even tried the Microsoft Approach and shut off the bus and started it up again. Still nothing. He tugged it. He pushed it. He lifted it and tried again and again.

When the next D6 pulled up behind us the rest of the passengers abandoned ship. The driver called in to Operations for a maintenance truck. Soon he was calling again and got the, "we know your situation." We had to wait. At least the AC worked even though the door could not be closed. I had my Car 5 Gang buddies with which to send text messages with such that they were not holding a flip up seat open for me. Mike and Trish spread the word about my absence. What a great gang.

My fellow "detainee" was anxious to catch the next MARC Brunswick train at 7:15 because it was the last of the day for her. I could get trains as late as 11:00 if necessary. At 6:09 a supervisor and maintenance truck arrived. Out wait had been 40 minutes. She was already checking on hotel rooms for the night in necessary.

The driver and supervisor talked for a minute or so then the supervisor climbed into the bus and sat down. He fiddled with the buttons and switches for a minute and the lift started to run. In another minute the woman was out the door and on her way across the street to Union Station. On my descent, the lift failed again. "Do the laying-on-of-hands again and get this thing working," I said. He laughed.

The driver stood there looking a bit embarrassed. "What did you do," he asked the supervisor?

"I prayed on the way in," he said. I added that he laid on hands and drove the lift demon out. The driver and I crossed the circle together because he needed to use the restroom. "I really needed to go but couldn't leave you on the bus. There would have been hell to pay, if I had."

He left me with a parting thought. "You know, I choose that bus over another one today because the AC on the other one didn't work."

This entire episode was precipitated because every escalator in Union Station was stopped at the same time and the elevator failed. All the people who had already been on that bus were also delayed by the same equipment failure in the rail station.

Post Script: When I mentioned this misadventure to a colleague, he was puzzled because he said all the D6 buses are 'low-floor' and have fold out ramps. I said, this one didn't. So now I realize that the bus I was on was a spare that was not up to current standards.

A Reminder From the Principle of Imminent Collapse

2011-03-12T12:04:00.000-08:00

Japan survived it latest brush with the Principle of Imminent Collapse on March 11, 2011 when the earth's crust ruptured sending an 8.9 Richter jolt through the crust and moved a mountain of seawater a few meters. The movement of that water propagated as a tsunami wave across the Pacific Ocean splashing the Northern Marianas Islands, Hawaii then the West Coast of the Continental US. The wave moved at the velocity of about 600 MPH taking upwards of 10 hours to reach our distant shore.

Here the wave of water tossed boats in the marinas about and killed a handful of people who were sightseeing the awesome forces of nature. One man was swept to sea while taking photographs. A friend of mine emailed a video clip of a three foot wave sweeping into the bay at San Francisco and into the normally calm waters of Sausalito where he lives on a houseboat. Everybody in the continental US had many hours of advance warning about an event that could be as bad as the doomsday messages of recent disaster movies or as innocuous as a the wave it turned out to be.

The people of the northern islands of Japan were not as fortunate. First they endured the few minutes of massive shaking when the earth moved. Then many of them were subject to the tsunami waves that followed within minutes. Although the epicenter of the quake was about 240 miles off shore the velocity of the wave being upwards of 600 MPH it did not take long for the devastation to begin.

Japan is the most well prepared nation in the world for dealing with earthquakes. They are no strangers to tsunamis either. Their national policies have required that all new construction be as quake resistant as is practicable. Most urban areas have been 'hardened' against the forces of the earth but the outlying regions have not received that same level of attention.

When the plans are made and the construction complete, there is a general improvement in resistance to the quakes and floods. When the warning systems are all in place and operational, there is still only a modicum of additional protection that can be derived with the technology. When a person lives near sea level and near the sea, a tsunami warning that can provide only 15 minute of advance notice is not going to be very effective for a large portion of the population.

The US was fortunate that such an earthquake event happened 5000 miles away and not in our backyard just off the west coast where there the underwater geography is very much the same at it is in Japan on their eastern side. This begs the question of what would have happened to LA, San Diego, and all the other southern California communities had this type of seismic event happened here. There are no tsunami sirens here. There are no transportation systems that could transport millions of people inland to escape the wall of water that would sweep across the cities.

The Principle of Imminent Collapse assures us that the event will ultimately happen. It assures us that we are arrogant to think we will not be home when the event happens. We can only be lucky to be away somewhere to avoid the catastrophe when it takes place. Planners say plan for the big event. Fiscal conservatives say wait for the event to happen then fix what is destroyed. There are even those factions that advocate doing nothing so we can start over and build from scratch. Still others estimate that the timeframe will be such that they will be long dead and buried from other causes before such an event comes to pass and they have to deal with it.

Although the interrelation between far flung events such as the Japanese Islands and the West Coast of the US may be infinitesimal, there remains a small relationship. The Japanese Islands moved about 8 feet eastward during the quake. This means the earth has changed shape, even if negligibly. The tilt of the axis of the earth has also been modified. We have no idea what long term effect this will create, or whether the outcome will be positive, negative or neutral. We noticed the movement of the islands which made the circumference of the earth at that latitude 8 feet smaller. This would act to increase the internal pressures in the earth. What we haven't seen is whether somewhere else a bulge developed that relieved the pressure. If the pressure has not equalized somehow, we can expect it to be released somewhere. I hope it is not in my backyard.

The Attack on the Middleclass

2011-02-26T13:49:00.000-08:00

Our learned opinionators from the Conservative alternate universe, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the passel of like-opined commenters, have been beating the drum and chanting that the American Middleclass and its way of life is under attack. They allege that Liberal policies and out-of-control government spending are to blame for the looming problems we are just beginning to experience. What they conveniently leave out of their presentations is that Republican politicians are poised to curtail and eliminate the modest gains that many American acquired during the past generation.

Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) seeks not only to bypass collective bargaining contracts with Wisconsin state public employees, but to legislatively eliminate their collective bargaining rights altogether. He wants the WI Legislature to directly dictate to the employees how much they will contribute to their pensions and for healthcare. Much like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the other steel industry magnates of a 100 years ago, he seeks to have absolute control over the lives of his employees. In actuality, the state public employees work for the Governor who is like the CEO of the company.

Carnegie knew (opined) how much an employee's labor was worth based on the price he could get for a ton of steel and how many tons the employees could produce per unit of time. He also did not provide any health care coverage for the employees and relegated to poverty anyone who was unable to produce a day's work due to illness or injury. Change in those conditions required bloody conflicts between the striking workers and the private police the Company hired to beat down "those people who hate this society."

A single worker has zero influence to improve his/her economic condition. This employee can be summarily dismissed for any reason at all. A bargaining unit has only two tools in its kit for improving the working conditions and compensation of the members. First is the voice of reason and when that fails, the have the ability to stop work and wait for the employer to capitulate. Strike breaking has been a Republican goal from the beginning. The practice was epitomized when President Reagan fired all the striking Air Traffic Controllers during his Presidency. Striking PATCO employees were barred from being employed again in the air traffic control jobs which were and remain Federal jobs. Men and women seeking to improve their economic standing and improve air travel safety stood their ground and lost everything for it. The Republican attack was swift and exacting.

Republicans hate the public school system in this country and aver that it is inefficient, wasteful and rife with overpaid, under-performing teachers who cannot be fired because of tenure and teacher union control. What they do not say is that public schools do not allow the administration or individual teachers to conduct prayers in class and a public school board decides what can and cannot be taught to the children. Public school classrooms are beyond the reach of the Conservative Agenda. In private school classrooms, Creationism can be substituted for Evolution, children can be made to bow their heads and say a prayer or at least listen to one that is recited on their behalf.

Private school tuition can be as high as the parents are willing to pay for the education and the children of poorer parents can be economically relegated to lesser funded schools. Even in a society of inequitable distribution of educations funds, the conversion to a private system only further divides the population. People who are marginally middle class in the first place and whose only hope of improvement is the education of their children get pushed out and down.

The attack on the public education system is one where the Republican Agenda seeks to not spend money on anyone's children but their own. Tuition vouchers for paying for private school tuition are the Republican way of circumventing the diversity of a public school education. Conservatives lost control of the curriculum and therefore went after creating ways of not having to participate under that paradigm.

We must study our history to realize from where the American Middleclass came. It was the creation of the combined desires of millions of workers who wanted a larger part of the economic pie that the Aristocrat Class always enjoyed. Each improvement was a hard won victory over the barnacle encrusted old-money class who owned everything. Every gain for the middleclass was a loss on the balance sheet of business. A 40-hour work week limited the per-person productivity of a worker. Each paid day of vacation, holiday and annual leave was drawn from the purse of a business owner who felt that he was being robbed by a union thug. It was the unions that made all of the improvements possible. It was the unions that made the middle class possible. Without them, all workers would be at the mercy of the company and the willingness of another person to underbid his labor rate.

Under those conditions no one would ever be able to make a plan for the future. Without the ability to make a reasonable plan, no lender would be willing to fund a mortgage, a car loan, an education loan, etc. If at any time an otherwise competent worker could be discharged, have his income reduced, there is no stability to the economy.

What is being wrought upon the state and local employees in Wisconsin is nothing less than an attempt by an upstart newcomer to enter the picture and not honor the rules by which everyone else played up to now. Governor Scott Walker has rushed in and decided that the rules must immediately be changed. His threat to lay off 1500 employees at the beginning of March 2011 is only a small part of the plan to change the rules of the game. The follow-on threat to eliminate another 5000 jobs unless he gets the rule change through is a further threat to the middleclass. The state's budget shortfall of $137 million would cost each of the 2.08 million Wisconsin households less than $68.50. So instead of raising a "budget repair tax" of $68.50 he will gut the compensation packages of 175,000 employees by between $5000 and $10000 each. Actually, if only state employees were asked to pay the budget repair tax each would have to pay only $782.86.

There is a non-sequitur here. The elimination of collective bargaining rights has nothing to do with balancing the budget. It does have to do with shrinking the American Middleclass. The Middleclass has always been a thorn in the side of dictators, but never for a democracy.

American DREAM Act

2010-12-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

Americans have a love-hate relationship with immigrants and immigration. We love being an immigrant and hate the others who follow us. It is like having your little brother or sister following everywhere you go. You want to be unique and free in your endeavors and not have to share with the brat.

After a few generations of residency in this country we like to forget that 99% of us are immigrants. The only distinction that holds any sway is recent immigrant versus long-term immigrant. For most of the long-term immigrants the dividing line is set by whether you or your ancestors passed through Ellis Island or not. The Ellis Island moniker stands for a point in time not for all prior immigrants. Europeans have swarmed here for centuries before the physical facilities of that portal were built. Incidentally so did Central American peoples via the border with Mexico.

Two of the biggest complaints about continued immigration from south of the border is the notion that they are taking away Americans' jobs and are sponging off our social services institutions. Both notions are partially true, and equally false. Without proper documentation an illegal immigrant cannot hold a job of any real significance such as bank teller, loan officer, real estate agent, lawyer, Doctor, Engineer, nurse, etc. They cannot pay taxes and collect on the benefits thus pair for. Living on the fringes of society, they don't reside in big houses and pay real estate taxes. They don't buy expensive new cars and pay sales tax on such items. In the big picture of such an existence, they are actually denied the ability to pay taxes. They cannot contribute in a bigger way to the revenue streams of the communities where they live and work.

Since they must hide themselves in the greater numbers of Latino citizens and legal aliens they cannot take advantage of insurance pools that would allow them to be covered for medical care. Most of the work they do is not for large corporate employers who include health insurance coverage for individuals and families. The result is indigent care in emergency rooms that is required by law.

One of the great innovation of Western civilization is the notion of private property and the ability to inherit. These two construction of law enable a family to start where their parents left off. The grandchildren in a family lineage can benefit from the hard work that their grandparents undertook to improve the lot of the family. With private property and inheritance the next generation may not need to buy a house and have a mortgage. There may be a going business that the sons and daughters can take over and continue. There may be intellectual properties on which several generations of family live. These benefits to the family also benefit society at large by allowing that some people do not need to take a job in order to have the money needed for participation in this society.

Such generational benefits are denied to all illegal residents inside America. First, the economic level of most such people is so low that accumulating wealth is a non-starter. Second, there is no way to convert their labors into long standing assets such as homes and businesses. This makes the immigrant and his/her children forever beholden to the labor market and the whims of legal residents to hire and pay them. It makes them generationally beholden to the social services institutions that have been established over the years that attempt to make sure that people are not hungry, sick or cold amongst the greatest wealth in the world.

Forever denying citizenship to the children of people who crossed the border without an invitation creates and maintains an underclass of near slave laborers. They become generationally dependent on other taxpayers even though they may be paying taxes without receiving any benefits for them. This is where the DREAM Act enters the picture.

A child younger than 18 who arrived with his/her parents is just as undocumented but not culpable for the commission of a crime. They need a path to full participation in this society so that they will eventually be able to make the transition from mere laborer to that of college educated managers and professionals. They need a way to become legitimized so that they too can acquire wealth and pass it along to their progeny. Otherwise society at large will always be called upon to subsidize their existence in this land. They will remain perpetually poor while the people who do employ them will keep getting wealthier.

Introducing: Human Life International!

2010-09-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

Father Thomas Euteneur, President of Human Life International expressed his opinions concerning gay marriage in a Life site News.com commentary titled "Gay Marriage and the End of Christian Civilization." (August 13, 2010)

In expressing himself so eloquently, he made references to current events on the west coast of America. After 52% of the voting population of California in 2009 endorsed Proposition 8 that restricted marriage rights to the pairing of a man and a woman, a solitary Federal judge overturned the "will of the people." This "activist judge" took it upon himself to rule that even a majority of voters do not have the right to tell other citizens whom they may marry.

While every church may independently or collectively decide whose marriages they will honor inside their temples, it is not their place to impose that limited authority on the population at large. Marriage, although sanctified by a church authority, is primarily an economic status sanctioned by the State, which ever that state may be. It is the state's recognition of the union that must be documented and recorded in order to have the remainder of our economic and legal system likewise recognize it.

This union of two adults conveys certain rights and responsibilities that enhance economic wellbeing . The union conveys the right to inherit property. It conveys the right to Social Security and survivor benefits. It establishes who is a spouse with respect to spousal and family health insurance coverage issued by an employer. It conveys the right to make end-of-life decisions on behalf of another person who no long is capable of expressing those decisions. The union permits two people to file a joint IRS Form 1040.

There is no place for a church, creed, faith, scripture or theology in those economic aspects of human relationships. No where in attainment of those rights is there any mention of how one must have sex or with whom. Any church may regulate those aspects within their walls, and require the swearing of an oath that the members only engage in certain sexual activities with their registered opposite-sex partners in order to maintain membership in good standing.

Fr. Euteneuer asserts that God decreed that marriage was only between a man and a woman based on "Genesis 1 (the marriage of Adam and Eve) to Revelation 21 (the marriage of Christ the Lamb with His Bride the Church) God has had only one model of marriage, and it is not gay marriage." His Bride the Church? This church was not a woman. So the Lamb, Jesus, marries an Institution. Let us not even go there.

"A close second to this is that gay marriage distorts the very concept of parenting as well as marriage. Even if you overlook the fact that gay marriage is by definition sterile, every child of a gay marriage has to be adopted or artificially inseminated, and that in itself is a violation of the whole concept of family." There are thousands of reproductively sterile marriages between man and women. There are thousands of adopted children by married couples who both have children of their own and not. Sterility and other reproductive barriers has prompted the development of artificial insemination. None of these institutions of Man are inherently detrimental to any child. The operative factor is love and caring parents. Marriage provided two of them as opposed to one. Euteneuer continues with the assertion that "Kids model their lives, their concept of family, their morals and oftentimes their whole worldview on their parents' attitudes and values." There is no disputing that. Divorce, spousal abuse, child abuse, poverty, drug and alcohol abuse likewise shape the minds of children and their attitudes and concepts of family. A read of the foster care statistics and the statistics on child and spousal abuse will open the eyes of any hardcore Christian who believes that Christian civilization might be doomed by allowing two men or two women, who love each other, to be united in economic unity. The incidence of dysfunctional family life far exceeds the numbers of couples who are homosexual and want to marry.

First, two homosexual people must want to become united in the eyes of the law. Second, the two people must be willing to "come out" exposing themselves to a bigoted world where Christian and Muslim, Hindu and Jewish fundamentalists are called upon to "fight against it with our very lives." Third, this couple must want to raise children. All of these factors significantly reduce the numbers of family units where "These kids get a totally distorted view of all these basics." The basics cited here must be the bigoted view of people who seek to limits the rights of others.

While the realities of American and religious society makes marriage and/or civil unions difficult or impossible, restricting such recognition doesn't alter the number of homosexual people by even one person. Loving couples have survived decades without the state recognizing their couple-status. The lack of the ability to marry has not changed the sexual orientation of anyone.

Taking a stand against gay marriage might just be a last stand against the assault on Christianity by the rest of the world. For certain Christians have been persecuted for 2,010 years since the religion first embraced the birth of Christ. But so have they been the persecutors. They have been particularly brutal against factions within their own ranks. Heresy has not been the wholesale denial of Christ as Savior, but rather a disagreement over the relationship amongst the Father, the son and the Holy Spirit. More Christian lives have been taken be Christians over such disagreements than by any other religion. Whole congregations have been executed because they refused to renounce THEIR priest's teaching of the dogma and embrace the official one.

Today, Christian homosexuals are being persecuted by other Christians for their belief that they are Christians and homosexual too. One thousand years ago, Rome would have sent the Christian Knights to enforce the edicts of the Pope that they renounce, repent and atone for their sins or die burning on a stake or being otherwise brutally tortured and killed in order to make sure that God didn't punish all of Christendom for the sins of the few.

Fr. Euteneuer wraps up his comments with proof that he is still worried that God is still the wrathful vengeful Jehovah of the Old Testament. "We are called to be faithful and obedient to the Plan of God for our world, and within that, God will bring forth the victory. There is no doubt that, if it is not already there, gay marriage will be coming to your state soon. If we don't fight it, our souls, our families and basically, our very civilization, will find themselves at "the end" of the line in very short order.

The ancient superstition that the righteous and the sinner will perish together when God's might wrath sweeps a tsunami, or an earthquake or flood across the land is alive and well in the minds of the scared. A plague of locusts or just HIV will take the guilty and the innocent alike. When the end does come in the Apocalyptic conflagration surely it will be because of a few gay couples being allowed to have the same civil rights as heterosexual couples.

The Mercy of the Universe

2010-09-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a monologue on the Radio one Saturday at noon. The storyteller related the events of his life that followed him through his adult years. On one fateful day while he was driving along a street a girl about his own age swerved her bicycle into the path of his car. He swerved to avoid hitting her but not enough to miss her. She was killed.

Through out his life from that teenage year until he was twice that old he was haunted by her ghost. Not that a ghost was metaphysically present but the memory of her and the life she might have led had he swerved enough and missed her. Maybe he would have been killed instead like so many drivers who undertake to miss hitting some one or something else.

Upwards of 40,000 people are killed in automobile accidents each year and many of the dead were killed by someone who did nothing wrong. They were merely the instrument of the death caused by another. The author asserted that many people who are involved in fatal car crashes suffer post traumatic stress as the result. The ones who were at fault or at least partially responsible, he said, had an easier time coping. His statement was that they knew why it happened and could take measures to never have it happen again. The person without fault has to deal with the random nature of the Universe. One cannot escape that mindless clockwork cause and effect nor ever understand its capriciousness. That person was at the mercy of the Universe. Actually we all are every day, but we are quite adept at forgetting that.

I had just returned from the Grocery store and was preparing to put away the thing that needed to be kept cold. I had my hands full with bottles and packages. I was thinking that I would not be so distressed by a random event disrupting my life because I was in this world to experience random events. Without the opportunity to have unexpected outcomes life would become tedious and boring like watching the same film every day knowing that the same people get sick and the same people die in the same way every time. No matter how good the acting, no matter how great was the script, or beautiful the cinematography, it would get boring and the desire to watch it again would disappear.

Just as I was thinking about not being traumatized by a random event, I bumped the plastic tray in the refrigerator door causing it to dislodge and fall on the tray below. The bottles and jars all plummeted to the floor and into the lower tray. Several items bounced and rolled away across the floor. Only one bottle broke.

That bottle contained the only item in the door trays that I cared about. It was a nearly full bottle of pure maple syrup. The shattered pieces of glass were mainly grouped together in the sticky mass of liquid that slowly spread out from the impact point. A few pieces of glass including the neck and cap slid the furthest away. It was a random event indeed. It was not one comparable to the magnitude of killing a bicyclist, but every day I open the refrigerator door and close it without dropping a single item. When I drive to the train station to go to work and then ride the subway to the office, random movements of people and objects set up millions of opportunities for the Universe to be heartless and cause me injury or death. But it doesn’t. It could and I realize that one day it might. Meanwhile, life is interesting.

John Stossel, Poor Baby

2010-09-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

John Stossel, poor baby, must have had to wait to sit down in a public restroom. His ambivalence about restroom design demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about what the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is all about. He should spend one day tagging along with a person who uses a wheelchair in any city of the United States. Better yet he should borrow a wheelchair and try to follow that person through that one day. My invitation is always open. His blog post, Disabilities Act Feeds a Suing Public demonstrates his lack of understanding.

The architecture of this country started out completely inaccessible to anyone who could not navigate stairs, simple street corned curbs, revolving door and heavy ones. Twenty year on from the passage of the ADA we are only scratching the tip of the problem of barriers that are intentionally built that prevent person with mobility limitations to participate in this society. I will bet that Mr. Stossel never waited in the Mens restroom for the one end stall to be vacated by the guy with a suitcase while the use of the other nine stalls turned over several times. I will also bet that he never flew from New York to LA on a jet that did not have a restroom that he could use if he wanted to.

Even when there are restrooms that have been remodeled, the dimensions are many time not to code. If the sink is too low, it is too low. This is a matter for the ADA. If the wiring is deficient and ground fault outlets are not installed where they are required, this is an electrical code violation. Both code violations are the result of professionals not doing their jobs correctly, poor workmanship, faulty inspections. While the business owner is ultimately liable for the deficiencies and their corrections, he does have recourse, unless he did the work himself.

Mr. Stossel also doesn’t have a clue when he talks about service animals and snakes in particular. “Millions” of small businesses will never have a customer with a large service snake that will disrupt the operations. Many businesses that did have a customer with a service snake never even knew it. We are not talking about Anacondas and Pythons here. If other customers were riled up by inflammatory language like in Stossel’s September 1, 2010 blog rant they would realize that there is nothing to worry about. I challenge Stossel to cite one single documented incident where a large service snake accosted a nearby restaurant patron anywhere in the US.

While there are people who specialize in discrimination lawsuits, some based on the ADA, there are hundreds of thousands of slip-and-fall suits, soft tissue automobile collision claims, Workers Compensation frauds, dog bite claims, racial, gender and age discrimination suits. None of these are disability related. Some are valid and some are merely the result of aggressive ambivalence chasing. Attorneys have to make a living too. They can allege a case on the flimsiest of facts, just like John Stossel.

Just “Because the law turns ‘protected’ people into potential lawsuits.” And “Most ADA litigation occurs when an employee is fired, so the safest way to avoid those costs is not to hire the disabled in the first place.” is not a reason to not have the protections. Employment of persons with disabilities might very well have gone down AND partly because of the Federal regulations that prospective employers seek to avoid. The low employment rates for person with disabilities have a lot to do with the lack of suitable transportation to get to the job and home.

The ADA employment regulations created two classes of job duty: Essential duties and non-essential duties. The essential ones can be required of an employee, even one with a disability. The non-essential ones can be reassigned. While there are requirements that employers provide “reasonable accommodations” for an employee with a disability, those regulations do not extend to expenses so large that another employee would need to be discharged to pay for them.

Stossel says, “Under the ADA, Olson notes, fairness does not mean treating disabled people the same as non-disabled people. Rather it means accommodating them. In other words, the law requires that people be treated unequally.” This argument is the same as the old fear that equal rights for women would require that both sexes use the same restroom. Being treated fairly does not mean being treated exactly the same. Just look at the queues at the restrooms at any large public venue. It is painfully clear to all women that the venue having exactly the same number of stations in the Mens room as for the Womens is not equitable. Most US facilities are in this manner deficient. What is the loss of one stall to make one larger when the overall number is 50% too low.

ADA accessibility standards benefit everyone. The Washington DC Metro Rail system has typically one elevator to enter every station and one that gets a person to the track level. It took a lawsuit back in the 1970s when the system was being built to make that so. Yes it added construction costs. Yes it adds maintenance and repair costs. But back then nobody ever considered the number of women pushing baby carriages through the system. They never considered that any man would be pushing that baby carriage! Today, every day, every station – baby carriages on the elevators. All boarding is done at train car floor level – no steps into or out of the cars. Wide fare gates accommodate more baby carriages, suitcases, wide people, parents holding the hands of children than people using wheelchairs! WMATA doesn’t have restrooms for the public in any station, not because of the ADA or accessibility laws, but because they did not want the expense of cleaning and repairing ANY restrooms.

There are no ADA POLICE. That leaves it up to individuals and their lawyers to take on the resistant business owners. The American legal system is notoriously fickle when it comes to making consistent decisions. When a business comes before the bench on an alleged violation of the ADA, it is usually not the first complaint that was registered.

“Finally, the ADA has led to some truly bizarre results.” Yes alcoholic employees are classified as persons with disabilities if they identify themselves and seek treatment. They do not need to be employed in safety sensitive positions such as piloting an oil tanker. To be fair to Captain Hazelwood, he was in his cabin sleeping when his second in command ran the Exxon Valdez aground.

Federal regulations will usually reduce short term profits for businesses that need regulations. I hope John Stossel never sustains an ugly scar on his face because then he might not be allowed on the television any more. And that won’t be a protected disability.

Why 1 in 5 Americans are Wrong

2010-08-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

White Christian Americans have always been a tad myopic. There is no wonder that a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll suggests that 1 in 5 Americans feel that Barak Obama is Muslim. I can't characterize the finding as Americans "thinking" that President Obama is Muslim. It is their myopia that stands in the way of thinking and leads people to feel instead.

Here is my point. Western culture is predisposed to view everything as a matter of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong, Christian and not Christian. Try this exercise yourself. A child is born. His mother is Caucasian and his father is Negro (please pardon my choice of words. Some Africans are white.) Is the child black or white?

Now change the father to Chinese. Is the child white or Chinese? The mother is Swedish Lutheran, the father an Orthodox Jew from the Ukraine. Is the child Jewish or Lutheran? The chances are that most of white Christian America will say: Black, Chinese and Jewish. How did you fare?

In the binary thinking of Western minds, if the child is less than all Caucasian the child is classified by the bloodline that is not Caucasian. Even one-quarter black is black. One-eighth. The converse of this heritage doesn't hold. A grandchild of three Sub-Saharan African grandparents and one Caucasian grandparent is not considered White. He may indeed by ostracized by his family and village for being of less than "pure blood."

It is no wonder that 20% of Americans think wrong about The President's religion. They look at African Muslims and see a resemblance to Mr. Obama. They see and hear his name with the Hussein emphasized and are lead astray. They see his skin color and the texture of his hair and can conclude only one binary thought: He's black, his name is odd and sounds Muslim. Must be Muslim. It's an easy mistake to make when you only have a Yes and a No choice to make. It's easy when one listens to only one source of information. To them, Muslim is an unalterable heritage like a strand of DNA, not a religion that one embraces through study, contemplation, and ritual attainment. It works that way in Christianity too. Calling yourself Christian doesn't make you one. It is in your thoughts, words and deeds and following the teaching of Christ that Christianity arises.

Additional Thoughts: Global Energy Demand

2010-08-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

Global Energy Demand

Even if global energy production from coal, oil and gas remains flat, we will run short at the rate of consumption and the increase in the rate of consumption by such countries as India and China. Those two countries comprise about 2.5 billion people. Although they are presently relatively low on the per capita energy use scale, their sheer numbers will overshadow the USA. While our economy is in a slow period and money is being borrowed against our futures anyway, we should be investing it in the infrastructure that we will need in the next 50 years. That way it will not be wasted. If we get better transportation, better healthcare with more doctors and nurses, energy sources that won't choke us, and cities where we can live and thrive then our taxes and the taxes of our children and grandchildren are not wasted and they will benefit them too.

Additional Thoughts: An Unholy Alliance

2010-08-29T11:51:00.001-07:00

The Tea Party folks can contract with the NRA to stand in the doorway of the Emergency Rooms of the country and turn away everyone who doesn't have adequate insurance coverage or proof of ability to pay. The NRA people would probably do it for free if they get legislator endorsements. Then Fiscal Conservatives can repeal the healthcare reforms that so enrage them.

Professional OathTakers can then swear to transport and treat only non-14th Amendment citizens regardless of the form of payment presented.

Additional Thoughts: Creationism

2010-08-29T11:50:00.000-07:00

God's Creation must be perfect according to theological thinking. How could He create anything less. The day He invented Adam then the woman Eve was the last day of six. Then He rested. Presumably He is still resting or the story would have continued on with how he further created more of the world we see today. One might imagine Him fashioning an automobile in which to ride over the Divine Highways to other equally glorious Gardens. He might have molded a cellphone from acorns and straw so that Man could call his mother on her birthday. Without divine hands it took nearly 6000 years for a man to fashion a lightbulb from glass and tungsten. It took nearly as long for man to invent television so that tele-evangelists could spread His word back around the world from where it came.

While there are fundamentalists who actually do advocate a return to scriptural roots, few western civilization residents would truly feel comfortable with out coal and petroleum fueled vehicles, heated and air-conditioned homes, electricity, radio and TV, telephones either wired or wireless, Internet, airplanes, antibiotics, refrigeration, tap water, flush toilets, TP, and antibacterial hand sanitizers.

All of these items have come about in the last 100 years, after 5,900 years since Creation. It seems that although God might have provided a great start, since then man's ingenuity seems to have taken over. God might have provided the creativity that is in mankind, that creativity has accomplished a lot of impressive things.

A divinely inspired scripture is only closely rivaled by the American Constitution for its ability to form the framework of a civilization and a society that is able to reinvent itself without completely trashing everything that came before. Whereas the constitution is a document and code of conduct that is able to evolve after its creation, the holy Bible is not. Every educator hopes that in some way his or her students will eventually exceed the sum of all the information and ideas that are stuffed into their tiny heads. I suspect that God as the great teacher would be no different.

There are the persistent students who never leave academia until they are forced out. They do not make that transition from learning to using that knowledge for fruitful purposes. They are fond of impressing others with what they know rather than with how they can utilize it for anything beneficial. They become masters of citation. The can quote chapter and verse without ever really understanding what the words mean. In their academic cloisters, if a statement or idea is not thoroughly peer reviewed and approved, it is utter nonsense and worthless for consideration. In this way, even something as well known as a spherical earth took hundreds of years to reach the status of common knowledge.

For they who are ardent adherents of biblical scripture, we can suggest that they fore go everything that came about after the day Adam was molded from the clay and had the breath of life blown into his nostrils. Upon this act, the rest of us might be able to believe that they are serious about their theological convictions and maybe sufficiently vetted in order to be believable.

"Whether the stone hits the pitcher, or the pitcher hits the stone.."

2010-08-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

"it's going to be bad for the pitcher." Cervantes.

The day had worn on under the blistering sun in the nation's Capitol. The atmosphere of DC held its heat as the workday wound down. I was sitting on my wheelchair waiting to cross G Street to the Metro. I had just crossed 13th as the pedestrian signal counted down to Zero and the traffic signal was about to change. A man forged ahead on his urgent crossing followed by a 30-ish man with white ear buds and his walking music surging in his head.

After he had crossed about halfway to the other side, an automobile driver sped straight through the intersection on HIS urgent engagement. I marveled at the synchronization of the early pedestrian and the late driver. As the car zipped behind the pedestrian, he momentarily looked back at what has blown that wind on him. I was glad that his music hadn't suddenly stopped and he too stopped to adjust his tunes-device as I have seen done so many times IN the Metro while people are walking ahead of me and suddenly stop for no apparent reason.

I proceeded when the pedestrian signal began its countdown. The man stopped at the corner while attending to his electronics. I arrived as he was about to obliviously cross my path as I zipped up the curb ramp.

"Did you see that," he asked?

"Well you were crossing on HIS signal."

"He ran the red light. It has just changed."

"and you were already more than halfway across the street when he did. I thought, 'I can't believe that guy is crossing the street now'," I said to him.

"He could have killed someone," he proclaimed.

"Not just someone. You."

"He was wrong," the lament continued.

"Whether he was wrong or you were wrong, it would be bad for you," I said, paraphrasing Don Quixote.

He continued on his way and I grabbed the moving handrail of the center escalator to descend into the station for my ride on the Metro Red Line.

A Pair of Whammies and an Ace Kicker

2010-07-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

[Cross posted from the NotoriousCar5Gang blog]

It happens all too often. It seems to me that it happens more often just as I am getting ready to put the commute on hold for a few days while I travel on business. The correlation is uncanny and I have mentioned to several of the regular MARC conductors enough times that when something goes terribly wrong, one or another will ask if I am traveling again. It used to be a preponderance of incidents low platform arrivals at Union Station that occur when I am about to travel. Now the train that I ride in the morning so regularly arrives on 8 or 16 that the correlation has been made meaningless.

This doesn’t mean that other fubars don’t surface to fill the void. It was July 26, the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This day will live in my memory as the day of A Pair of Whammies and an Ace Kicker.

First let me explain that the following day I was scheduled to fly to Alabama on company business and would be off the remainder of the week. We arrived on the 16 Track as recent normal would dictate. The manual lift was littered with trash that the conductor kicked to the curb, so to speak, and onto the track bed. Beads of sweat on his forehead formed into rivulets and dripped off his chin. As always, I thanked him for the service he provided and let him know that I was going to be away for the remainder of the week. He replied with, “ah, oh.” We both knew that something probably was in store for us.

I departed the office a few minutes early in order to stop by the ATM at the corner near the office. I would need a few dollars for the meals on the trip. When I arrived at the station, Dave, one of the station supervisors gave be the heads up for the 16 Track so that I could get aboard before the onslaught of the remaining 899 passengers. I got me vertical ride to the car floor level and backed into my usual spot. Soon others of the Gang filtered in. Sandy and Mikey arrived followed by George. Even Princess Carly arrived soon enough to get a seat. George got up for Shelly, who has been a new addition to the usual suspects. Mikey held his seat in case Candice arrived.

Billy and Andrew made their appearances and Susan too. We had a quorum and a peanut gallery of itinerants, those people who just happen to stop for an open seat.
The day had been one of those above 90 days where Amtrak promised cold water in the station and just water on the trains in case there was a problem. The HVAC cut out a minute or two before the train started moving. The Princess, sitting in her corner spot, said, “A least we are moving.” It could not have been more than 30 seconds before the train slowed to a stop. I gave Carly one of those sideways glances and expression of mock disgust.

We all waited for the announcement. They were going to get the on-site mechanic out to the locomotive to see about getting it restarted. We had only moved about 2 car lengths before the end came. They fiddled about for a few minutes before announcing that the train was dead and the run canceled. Remember the double whammy? Here it comes. The 6 o’clock departure would take on as many of us that would fit. Here it is. The 6 o’clock train is on Track 8.

Now I have to wait to get off after they drag the half dilapidated lift down to my new location AND I would need to wait again to get back on the replacement train. The Gang ran ahead and regrouped in the fifth car on the new trainset. While there were a few strangers already seated, Carly and Shelly got their relative positions again. While I waited for the lift to be brought along the platform, Sandy and George taunted me by holding cold beer cans up to the window. Although I would have to wait, I did know that a cold one would be waiting. Billy took the opportunity to stop by the station package store.

A round of cheers when up as I made my entrance. Even though the aisle was crowded, my usual spot had been preserved. The new fifth car was a “café car” with the alcove behind where I sit. I offered to pull in there if two people cared to sit. Billy declared, “no way, we fought hard to keep that seat up.” I didn’t argue. Soon enough I was cracking open the cold one that was handed across the aisle and along to me.

We waited until the scheduled departure of this train. As we lurched into motion I said to Carly, “don’t say a word.” She pursed her lips and kept quiet. We held our anticipation until we were fully out of the station.

One of the occasional guys who drops in on occasion got talking about how the heat breaks down the locomotives and that they knew that DC was hot in the summer. Why then didn’t they buy equipment that wasn’t as sensitive to the heat? Billy mentioned the catenary lines and how they sag when it is hot. Mikey added the phrase “the cat and the canary” from our previous raucous conversations.

I said that it was just like the railroad folks to underestimate the needs of the people that serve. After all they would prefer to be hauling freight. Bill questioned, “Why so negative, Bob? You are usually the optimist.”

Mikey quipped, “He’s SEEN the canary.” That brought up all the imminent failures we have experienced over the years. Susan brought up her fifteen years of MARC commuting and how even when it was bad in those “old days” it was not nearly so often.

The ride moved along reasonably fast up until we had to stop to allow the Acela to clear the BWI platform before we proceeded. I promised an “ace kicker.”

The train stopped with our car reasonably close to the stairwell. I jumped out and headed for the stairs like everyone else. Susan and I waited by the elevator for it to return to the lower level. A crowd of other anticipatory commuters hoped for a spot in the elevator. One of these days BWI station will have two elevators on both sides of the platform. For now though the single rickety units would have to suffice. We packed in and bore up under the extreme heat of 8 human bodies packed into an already hot 280 cubic foot box. When we arrived at the pedestrian bridge level, the kicker became manifest. The door failed to open. The buttons failed to prompt the door. The car would not move and the door did not open.

At least the emergency bell, for what it’s worth, rang out clearly. The emergency phone also dutifully dialed its prescribed number. No one answered. Maybe he or she was out for a smoke or a toilet break or maybe no one was there. We didn’t wait.

A woman asked the logical question, “can we open the door ourselves.” She also posed the associated one about how we would do it. Undoubtedly there was at least one person on the verge of freakout.

I said for those by the door to place the palms of their hands flat on the door and push left. With several intermittent pushes, the door mechanism clicked into place and it slowly slid open. In one big wave everyone was out the door. I quipped to myself that I would probably be the only one in the elevator on the other side. It was astute deductive reasoning. No one waited there to ride down.

Just as I was about to cross the bridge, Jill emerged from the stairwell and we walked over together. I related that we had just averted a major meltdown in the stuck elevator. “Really,” she pondered? “Yes, really. No one is waiting to ride down in this one.” It arrived at my call, Jill and I rode down together. There was no Ace to match the kicker.

Now my only travails will be the three As of flying that constantly are a problem to the traveler: Airlines, Airplanes and Airports. They are all equally good and equally bad each in their own ways. But THAT is another story.

The Adventure of Commuting

2010-07-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

Recently, my oft posed question has been: When did commuting to work become an adventure? Wasn’t the stereotype of the commute a long boring drudgery that had to be endured in order to match ones household expenses to ones income. Or it was a necessity for having access to suburban schools while still holding down that urban managerial job where you had worked your way up from peon to harried middle-manager. Whatever the reason for the long trip, one had to drive alone on what is euphemistically called an “Expressway” or sit in a bus in the same traffic are the motorists or read the morning newspaper while cruising along the tracks on a commuter train.

When I relocated my career to DC in 1994 while still living in my house on the cul-de-sac in Baltimore, the daily repetition was quite ordinary and indeed boring. I had to meet the train on a crumbling platform in a swampy valley near the BWI airport. The station there already showed signed of its age even though it was not quite 15 years old. The bloom was off its flower even then, but the station as a whole was still quite functional. The two elevators that made crossing over the three tracks worked every day and there was little need to consider what I would do should there be an outage. My wheelchair doesn’t do steps very well but it goes down a flight far better than up one.

On February 22, 2000 the MTA inaugurated the bi-level train car service and announced the intent of doubling MARC ridership by 2020. That was a noble endeavor but one that was more marketing and pronouncement than substance. Ridership did however increase with the advent of the larger capacity cars. At an average of 132 seats per can there was comfortable room for more passengers. Fortunately there was also more standing room for the additional commuters who would be seeking transport into DC each day. The total number of trains each day remained constant on the Penn Line and space was at a premium almost from the start, even on a normal day.

Soon the parking lots at three of the busiest stations were filled and reached capacity earlier in the morning. Halethorpe, BWI and Odenton each reached capacity in a rotation mostly determined by the construction schedules of additional space and the fees that were charged at BWI where they constructed first one garage then a second one. Walking distances at Halethorpe and Odenton reach as long as 0.6 miles from the farpoint to the boarding zones. This long walk is an inconvenience but doesn’t not deter the commuters as a whole. There is a significant amount of ‘churn’ in the overall ridership. When a new rider sees the crowded conditions and challenges of parking and the regular delays of service, they drop out and someone else fills their place. One doesn’t need to be a masochist to commute on MARC, but it certainly helps. I say that with all due respect to MARC personnel who are the front line interface between riders and the operations and themselves must have masochistic tendencies in order to put up with the daily guff that several thousand people can present.

The MTA intent coupled with the economics of $4 gasoline conspired to raise the level of ridership to unprecedented levels. They added a ninth car to some trains because there is a fixed number of parking slots for trains at the terminus in DC. More and heavier cars loaded with 132 seated people and sometimes another 20 to 40 standees, taxed the capacities of the locomotives that were sized and purchased at a time when there were fewer and smaller cars in the set. One an occasional basis the additional weight could be handled by the exiting tracktive effort of the equipment. That ability to manage the additional load may have been possible when the equipment was new, but after a decade and longer, the motors just cannot work reliably every run every day. MARC is the victim of its own success and lack of ability to respond to age and capacity demands. This all is cold comfort to the 900 plus riders who were stranded in sweltering heat on May 21, 2010 when the locomotive that pulled them homeward failed between stations for the ‘um-teenth’ time.

But all of that is not what I am writing about today. There are ancillary equipment and services that are just as essential to commuting as getting a seat on a crowded train and having a locomotive successfully pull it to all the stations in a reasonable on-time manner.

Union Station has 4 tracks on the lower level which do not board from high-level platforms. On the upper level where most MARC commuters are familiar, there are three such tracks without high-level platforms for boarding the trains. To most riders climbing the steps is a perfunctory exercise that is accomplished without must thought. But then there are those passengers who are marginal at best with their abilities to walk and climb steps. Such people actually have a more difficult time going down the steps than up because of the last big step and the affects of momentum as their body mass continues to move pursuant to Newton’s Law’s of gravitational forces. Ten there are the riders such as myself who use wheelchairs and are completely dependent on the train crews and the lift equipment to board and alight a train when the high-level platforms are not scheduled for the train.
The need for such lift equipment is a necessary part of the realities of a station that has a higher need for moving luggage and supplies around than for ease of passenger boarding. Elevators are necessary where passengers must cross over tracks. This is a fact. The issue is the collateral deterioration of these ancillary systems. The wheelchair lifts and elevators are getting older too and are in a state of decline just like the locomotives and rail cars. All are necessary for the successful operation of a passenger railroad.

During the last two weeks period of June when the locomotives failed and an engineer blew passed the Odenton Station there were multiple incidents of passengers being diverted and delayed due to the ancillary equipment and scheduling failures.
One evening the conductor stopped back at my location as we prepared for arrival at BWI. He reported that the elevator was broken and I could not cross the tracks to the garage. The Plan B solution was to continue on to Penn Station and take the next train back to BWI. This entails an extra hour of travel in order to get 30 feet across the tracks to the other side. A week later that scenario was repeated on July 2 except that no one on the train knew that the elevator was positioned between levels while a technician was troubleshooting why it did not work. Faced with another unscheduled trip to Penn Station, I negotiated a solution with the Tech. He could make it run in manual mode by riding along and communicating with his partner in the well beneath the car.

All of these snafus took place during one of the worst weeks for MARC commuters that included three out of 5 days on low-level tracks, a major breakdown, a station blow-by, a meet the managers meeting where the managers were 35 minute late, two minor locomotive failures, two elevator outages.

This is one week in the life of a MARC commuter. Other events in the past year involve the extended commute that involves driving to the parking lot, and talking WMATA to ones final destination. Metro has its share of the exact same infrastructure deficiencies. I have lost count of the elevator and escalator failures that have impacted arriving at work and catching the evening MARC back home. The trains are the primary mode of transport, but getting into and out of the stations counts as part of the experience. Those experiences constitute the adventure I alluded to at the beginning of this story.

There was the fatal crash that claimed 9 lives a year ago. There is the dropped collector shoe that set off electrical explosions in the tunnel by Judiciary Square in October 2009. There are the innumerable service disruptions that took place in that year since that fatal crash. All events add to the notion that commuting has become a life and limb adventure. Not one of these situations is related to terrorist or even alleged terrorist activities. Commuting is quite enough excitement without the addition of the intrigue of bad actors trying to make it worse.

Private Fubars on the MARC

2010-06-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get my own private fubar from the MARC trains. Even when I miraculously escape the monster breakdowns by being on company travel or a day of annual leave, they have a special way of evening that score. After dodging the bullets of Monday and Tuesday at the end of June, where hundreds of my fellow commuters were stranded in the summer heat on a stalled evening train, I got my personal treatment.

The conductor stopped back at my end of Car 5 where I was sitting with the Gang and informed me that the elevator at BWI was broken and I would be unable to cross the tracks to get my car and go home. Unlike massive breakdowns of whole trains with 900 people who are left sweltering in their seats without HVAC or water, there is a Plan B for when I cannot get off at BWI like this.

First of all it is extremely rare that the evening train arrived at the southbound side of the station in the evening except now when that event is scheduled due to track and platform work on the other side of the station. For several weeks our evening trains have been using the Three Track every night and although a nuisance to about 400 who must climb the stairs to go over the tracks, they can do it. Because my wheelchair doesn’t do stairs going up very well, I had to invoke the Plan B that we have had up our sleeves for all of the 16 years that I have commuted on this train.

Plan B involves my staying on the train for three more stops until we get to Penn Station Baltimore then either getting the next MARC train back, the next Amtrak train back or as a third option, a taxi ride back. Any of those three possibilities consume a minimum of one extra hour getting home. It is an irritation but not one where life and limb are risked in the name of holding down a job.

The bigger irritation is that the BWI station has no provisions for an alternate means of crossing the tracks. This constituted the Vulnerable Geometry of which I write. They do have provisions for ambulatory passengers to board the center track from both platforms on wooden decks laid between the rails, however one cannot cross all three track at one location. One must walk down a few steps at the end of the platform to reach the single boarding location. Such boarding operations are accomplished with station crew assistance and at time when no trains are approaching the side track that is out of service at the times the center track is needed. Again it is only me (and any other wheelchair users who happen to be planning to ride that day) who get the screws put to him.

Add to that irritation that in all the years that MARC commuter trains have operated, the Halethorpe Station has not had platforms nor any way to cross the track other than a long climb up about 40 feet of stairs and down again. And I live 5 miles closer to Halethorpe than to BWI. With due respect to the planners, they are actually now building platforms and a cross over at Halethorpe that should be completed within my lifetime.

So Where IS Plan B?

2010-06-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

I have commuted between BWI Rail station and Union Station for 16 year. I've seen the best service and the worst service events in that time. Mechanical failures are inevitable. They are related to equipment age and funding issues. The bigger failures are always the ones that are compounded when company management fails to appreciate the gravity of the situations they allow to take place by their short-sighted responses and lack of timely information. There is no excuse for a poor or non-existent plan.

Several years ago, I was fortunate to not be commuting on the MARC Penn Line on the occasion of a mid-summer breakdown that lasted several hours. The train was stalled on the tracks between stations and a rescue locomotive was dispatched but the entire ordeal lasted the several hours in the afternoon heat that caused several passengers to experience medical emergencies. It was only my work travel schedule that had me elsewhere on that fateful day.

Stalled without power, the HVAC systems were not functioning and the interior temperatures of the bi-level cars climbed over 100 degrees. A lack of useful information and emergency planning by the MTA management and staff left passengers to fend for themselves. People in each can took it upon themselves to remove the emergency exit window panel in order to create some level of ventilation. Even with the windows out the stifling heat prompted some passengers to climb out on to the track bed to get away. Many walked over the berm and found their own way home at the end of a very bad ride.

After that incident, the MTA furnished promises that they would handle any future such events with more competent response. One of the plan elements was a supply of emergency bottled water. Fast forward to May 28, 2010. Again I was fortunate to be on company travel and not on the stalled train. The evening express train, 435, leaving Union Station experienced mechanical troubles just south of the New Carrollton station and was pushed back to DC for a different locomotive. That incident did get handles in an expedient manner and the passenger, though delayed and irritated, were not left stranded in dangerous heat conditions.

June 21, 2010, the 5:38 departure from Union Station with a full consignment of 900 passengers left the station only to become stranded by a stalled locomotive between stations. This time the braking systems became locked and the rescue locomotive could not move the train. These 900 passengers were stranded inside the aluminum cars once again. If one thinks that emergency water was available in June, that person would have been wrong. There were many opportunities for the management to load the water supplies aboard the train, but did not do it. There are several allocated cars on MARC Trains that are called Café Cars. In those cars there is a compartment large enough for many dozens water bottles. An interesting observation I made on June 23, is that there was a new nylon tie sealing the door of the Café compartment with the date 6-23-10 inscribed on it. I suspect that just maybe there is a supply of bottled water in there for the next time the train breaks down in the afternoon DC heat.

Swirl Theory

2010-04-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why it is that you never heard of something and then suddenly you hear and see several references to that very thing in the next few days? Do you ever not see an old friend for years and when someone mentions him/her you cross paths in the oddest location? Have you watched a movie and be impressed by an actor/actress who you never heard of and the next movie or two later, there he/she is again? Well there is Swirl Theory to explain what is going on. Also see the Principle of Imminent Collapse

The cause and effect relationship applies to events that are in direct proximity to each other. When one billiard ball strikes another the striking ball changes direction and speed. It imparts direction and speed to the target ball and it rolls away from its original position or changes its speed and direction if it too was already in motion. Sir Isaac Newton described this relationship with the equation Force=Mass times Acceleration (F=Ma) . This relationship between the two billiard balls is wholly predictable and replicable. What is less apparent is that two objects can pass near to each other and exhibit a cause and effect relationship.

This lesser obvious relationship is also wholly measurable and understood by physicists as a Gravitational, Electrical, or Magnetic interaction defined by the equation: F=c(M1 x M2/d2) . You don’t need to understand the mathematics but simply, there is a force between any two objects that acts at a distance and is smaller the further away the two object are.

Even lesser known and understood is how events that take place in similar places at similar times can shape each other and manifest divergent outcomes. How GEM (gravitational, electric, magnetic) forces act across a distance is conceptualized by considering a field of force that act with a uniform effect until something comes along and disturbs the uniformity. Picture a tightly stretched trampoline. It is essentially a flat uniform surface. If you put a small glass marble on it the marble will sit there and wait until something comes along to disturb the uniformity of the trampoline surface. Now carefully place a bowling ball anywhere on the stretched surface. Two things will happen. The bowling ball will migrate to the middle of the trampoline because it deflected the surface downward due to gravity. The second thing that will happen is the small marble will roll toward the bowling ball and stick to it. The marble is only following the bent surface of the trampoline created by the bowling ball.

Two magnets will attract each other across the distance between them. A positive and negative electrical charge will do the same.

All around us are these GEM fields that are constantly interacting with each other. There is an inter-relationship between these three types of force fields. Each force acts in its own characteristic manner on objects that are within its reach. Mathematically it can be shown that every two particle of matter exert a G force on ever other particle in the Universe, no matter how small that forge might be. Every electron and proton impacts every other one in the Universe. Again the same for every magnetism source.

Just as trillions of trillions of electrons create an electro-magnetic field that surrounds us, everything and everyone around each of us creates a field of possibilities any of which could be the next effect to a cause. All the mass in the Universe is moving around in a semi-random way that while it may appear chaotic and random, it is in fact governed by those two equations stated earlier and a couple more that are too complicated for this discussion. Although we can’t see it, our bodies are acting and reacting in the same manner as the marble on the trampoline or an electron floating in space. Our bodies are composed of mass that has gravity, contains iron that is magnetic and is electrically active and actually has an electrical field emanating from it, although it is quite weak. From a cosmic point of view, our bodies are indistinguishable from the air around us and the Earth beneath our feet. Indeed, we are composed of the air around us and the Earth beneath our feet. It is just that the matter of our bodies is more highly patterned than is the dirt and the gas of the air.

Our human bodies are highly patterned fields of energy that are far from uniform and which are deformed, deflected and warped by everything around us. The spinning of a magnet in an electrical field will induce electricity in wires that are around it. The moving magnet creates swirls and eddies in the previously uniform electrical field. Those swirls and eddies form currents that move by wave motion. The magnet doesn’t have to go anywhere to be felt because the magnetism flows toward or away from the magnet on a wave in the field.

To understand wave movement just drop a pebble in a pond. The circular ripples are a wave of energy that moves through the water without the water going anywhere. Two pebbles dropped in the pond will make two sets of circular waves that meet and interact with each other. If one wave is at a high point and the other at its low point, the result will be calm water at that location. If both are at their high or low points, the result will be a place in the water where the level is twice as high or twice as low. Many thousands of pebbles will make a highly chaotic-looking water surface, but each set of circular waves are independent of each other.

The events of our lives act in a similar fashion. Events travel on wave fronts that propagate away from the point where they originate. These event-waves interact with other event-waves to create that which we see around us. They are subject to the same forces that shape the movement of other types of waves. The strength of the force between events and event-waves can also be described by the GEM equation: F=c(M1 x M2/d2). This equation demonstrates that there is a force between events that is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. In simple terms, the force diminished greatly as the distance increases. The ‘distance ‘ parameter has two dimensions, one of space and the other of time. Therefore, two events may occur on the same spot but 4 decades apart in time but still have an impact on each other. Yes, an event can have an impact on the other even though the one is in the past.

Such retro-active effects are not readily seen and understood, but there is an explanation based in the wave nature of events. Instead of dropping two pebbles in a pond change that to a deep water stream. The surface is relatively smooth so you can see the ripples clearly. The stream water is moving left to right past you on the bank. The pebble that is dropped into the moving water downstream of your position creates ripples that travel upstream toward you. From your point of view the ripples are coming out of the past toward you. A pebble dropped in the water up stream of your position makes ripples that move faster than the flow of the stream and come at you out of the future. This example would be more obvious if it were tiny floating boats that cause the ripples. On one hand, you would see the ripples arriving before the boat floats by, on the other you would see the ripples of the boat that was dropped in down stream where you could not see it. These two boats create waves of energy that interact with each other, one from the past and one from the future.

Flow in a stream is rarely uniform and consistent. There are currents in the fluid that may not be obvious to an observer who is standing on the bank enjoying the beauty of the stream and how the sky and the horizon reflect on the placid surface. Big currents will warp the surface. Rocks on the stream bed divert the water as will variations along the banks. The water constitutes a field of energy that acts both on other parts of itself and on the stream banks and bottom. Waves travel in this turbulent field and are shaped and reshaped by the flow and the other waves in the field.

Two bits of floating detritus can enter a river miles apart, days, weeks or months apart on the calendar and end up in the same backwater location trapped behind a log or washed up on the bank just above the pool elevation. Each bit will have traveled a different path from a different starting point only to end its journey having met in that same still water location. One cannot assure that the tossing of two and only two objects will end in their meeting in the same still water, but with the tossing of thousands of objects there will be a propensity for them to eventually arrive there. The swirling turbulence is not random in nature but has an guiding impact on events.

The lives of human beings are likewise guided and channeled by the flow of events in which they exist. Event-waves travel within other event-waves and combine with them to create that which we see as our times and our histories. The swirls sweep us in similar directions that carry us to common locations. Those swirls also carry others to their locations and sometimes into ours.

Marketing designers strive to create event-waves that predictably place their ‘products’ in the still waters where many people will interact with them and spend their money to continue that interaction.

Artistic performers work to get themselves seen and heard so that later more people will see them and hear them and they will become famous and wealthy in their pursuits.

Entrepreneurs strive to discover or create the Next Big Thing. They try to figure out where that next still water is that is the endpoint for all the turbulent movement that makes predictions difficult. Some people seem to know how the currents move and where they will carry the bits that are moving in those currents.

Personal event-waves

Every person is a point source for the propagation of event-waves. We do not see these waves but perceive only the portion of them that intersect with ourselves or our own event-waves. This is why we can be so wrong in our interpretation of the nature of a person. It is also why we can believe that what someone has done was good and that exact same action is considered bad by someone else. The event-wave that hits us and resulted in a favorable outcome might actually kill someone else. Indeed, the favorable outcome might have required that death. Consider how many suspected serial-murder cases go forever unsolved because the killing stopped. The killer may have been himself killed in an unrelated event. Maybe an automobile collision. Undoubtedly, there are people alive today who would have been the serial-killer’s victim if he had not died in the collision.

On just the opposite side of that previous example there is the tragic outcome. “There is a killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad, if you give this man a ride, sweet Emily will die…” (as sung by Jim Morrison) describes that intersection of event-waves. We usually only think about the intersection of the killer and the victim and not about the cloud of potential events and outcomes that constitute the event-waves that ultimately intersect. The swirl of event-waves brings all the victims to the killer (or the killer to all the victims) and scatters everyone else away to relative safety, at least from that killer. One person might be pushed away from the killer by the energy of his event-wave front only to be destroyed in another tragic event.

The driver in an automobile speeding along the highway with a faulty tire may make it home today, but he/she is moving along with an event-wave that could manifest itself in tragic consequences at any moment. Today he arrives home safely. Tomorrow a truck driver who has not slept enough to be driving this particular highway at this particular time will swerve in front of the car with the faulty tire. The driver swerves and misses a collision, but the tire ruptures and the car spins out of control and collides with the minivan with the soccer team…

Mom and the kids set out as usual that morning as they always do on Saturdays in the summer. The car driver normally relaxes on Saturday mornings, but his employer asked him to work on this Saturday. Had the truck driver stopped to sleep and be rested, he would have still been 400 miles away from the tragedy that unfolded on that Saturday morning when the major event-waves intersected. To be fair here, if any of the three drivers had started out a minute sooner or later, driven a mile per hour faster or slower, this outcome of the event-waves would have been completely different.

The larger aspect of Swirl Theory is that in the larger field of energy that is acted upon by hundreds of millions of individual event-waves creates conditions where people and events are swept in the same direction. The combined wave peak that manifests when many waves constructively add together makes a huge wave front that carries many people to the same destination. Impending events like a war or Woodstock push and pull people to specific location by the thousands for either a horrific end or “three days of love and music.” Each man and woman, boy and girl who trekked the distance to Woodstock in the Summer if ’69 made a singular decision that was far from independent of everyone else. The combined event-wave grew larger as fewer days remained until the opening act. People were swept into the current and swirls that deposited them on the farm in the rain and in the mud. And like the oceanic tsunami, this combined event-wave took on a life of its own pulling everyone along even against better judgment (if there had been any) to be swept up and deposited at the concert or be waylaid on the way, never to actually get there.

Sometimes the combined event-wave is clearly visible as in the run-up to an election, or the Super Bowl game. Other times the combined event-wave goes unnoticed or ignored until it splashed on the shore as with the ’65 race riot in Watts, and the August 1992 Los Angeles riot. It was not the beating of Rodney King or the acquittal of the four officers that caused the 1992 riot, it was years of dissatisfaction, inequality, subjugation and lack of financial resources in the African-American groups and the perception that everyone else has more and is taking it from them. Individual people living is South Central LA could see their poverty, see the brutal suppression enacted upon themselves, see that the Korean-American culture dominated the small retail market located in the African-American neighborhoods. Wealthy customers would not object to Koreans running the 7-11, hiring their friends and family, and take the profits out of the neighborhood. But the poor customers see it and yet another way to keep them down – no jobs, and a drain of the money that IS in the neighborhood. It was a mini-scale version of globalization, right there in their faces. They rebelled. Burned and looted the neighborhoods. Targeted the Korean communities.

This event-wave combination that creates huge wave amplitudes was seen before. It has been seen since. It will be seen again. As long as the underlying causes are not remedied but only suppressed, there will be future eruptions of violence and destruction. Individual people will be swept in the same direction to the same destiny.

Even when the light of reason fails and fires burn in the cities, good people get caught up in the swirl and accomplish great feats. The lone man standing in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in 199? Was unlikely to have planned such a stand. He did what he felt he must do.

Reginald Denny was a white truck driver who was dragged from his truck and beaten by a mob of African-Americans while a news station helicopter televised it from overhead. He was rescued by an unarmed, African American civilian named Bobby Green Jr. who rushed to the scene and drove Denny to the hospital. Green was swept up in the national events and has returned to relative obscurity since. He never would have said, “if I see an white man being assaulted by a mob during a race riot, I will jump in and save him.” He just did it.

Fidel Lopez, a Guatemalan immigrant, was pulled from his truck and beaten by a mob that included the same assailant, Damian Williams, who had earlier beaten Mr. Denny. Rev. Bennie Newton, an African-American minister, prevented others from beating Lopez by placing himself between Lopez and his attackers and shouting "Kill him and you have to kill me, too". Both he and Bobby Green Jr. risked their lives to save someone who was being swept along in the turbulent swirling events of those few days.

The national televising of the events did spark additional yet smaller riots in other cities, but it also alerted people to the turmoil and allowed them to take positive actions.

Damian Williams, a single person created an event-wave around himself whose ripples are still being felt these 18 years later. They will ripple for many years to come. Rodney King in his fear of being returned to prison on parole violations, sparked a riot that left 35 people dead. His resistance to arrest was fueled by that fear. The resultant police actions were deemed excessive by a civil rights jury after a criminal case jury decided it was not excessive.

In every case, the affects of the event-waves combine in ways that increase the height (amplitude) of the wave or in ways the cancel the amplitude. Consider the biblical admonition to turn the other cheek, or the phrase that discretion is the better part of valor. When insulted a man can strike back or can “consider the source” and walk away. If he walks away his and the other event-waves meet in such a way that one at the highpoint meet the other at the low point resulting in no fight, no injury, no collateral damage. But if he strikes back because he has already taken enough crap from the transgressor, or from any number of other people, the results can be huge. Blood feuds have been fought by families, clans, tribes, nations, and even religions where one transgression follows another in revanchist folly. These battles can last for generations. Each new generation is swept into the stream and the swirl carries them to the same place. Gang turf wars have event-waves too that draws in young members who are so unprepared to swim in the flow that the flow carries them far downstream and into that place where the detritus all collects.

On a more happy note, two solitary people can live their lives in the absence of each other not knowing of the existence of the other. The events of their lives and the world around them each add an increment of wave energy to the churning swirling events of their days and bring them together in a small eddy where they remain long enough together to meet and get to know each other. In there they form a new pattern of event-wave that contains the two of them. Then they can re-enter the stream and flow along as one.

Explosions Rock My Metro Train

2009-10-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

Oct 6, 2009 Metro Center Station, DC

I waited on the Metro platform at Union Station as I have become accustomed to over my years of commuting into DC. I hadn't hurried for the train that was already in the station when I arrived. Soon the next train arrived and Robert, a man who is usually on the evening MARC train and part of our Car 5 Gang, arrived from the opposite end of the platform. We boarded behind the pushing crowd so as to be able to remain near the doors in my wheelchair and not get thrust further in by the later arrivals.

We held for an extra minute for the train ahead of us to clear the station at Judiciary Square, then we proceeded. At Gallery Place-Chinatown we were delayed by a sick passenger who needed to be assisted off the train. Robert, with his gallows humor, said they need to toss the passenger off the train so we could get going. In a sense that is what they did. A supervisor assisted the non-emergency exiting of the passenger and we began to move out of the station.

The train lurched forward and we joked that they were trying to knock us down. Apologies went all around for the people who had just bumped into someone else. While we sat there, the operator announced that we would be holding while they "try to figure out what THAT was." It was not your usual false start as when someone is leaning against the doors and the fault indicator stops the train. The operator announced that maintenance personnel were checking the length of the train to make sure nothing was under the train. Again, Robert suggested that it felt like we had run over someone.

The operator got the permission to proceed and we moved slowly forward into the tunnel. My third car location had barely entered the tunnel when the first explosion rocked the train. The shock wave pushed me forward a bit. The flash was clearly visible against the dark walls of the tunnel. A collective "OH," went up and the level of nervous chatted accelerated. Two more explosions shook the cars. The flashes and reverberations seemed closer. My thoughts were, "is this what a terrorist act is like?" The train was stopped in the tunnel – lights on – smoke beginning to filter in through the floor vents and door joints. Some yelled that "we have smoke coming in here." Robert called out for everyone to remain calm and shouting would do nothing to help.

Another explosion. The train operator announced that she was going to limp the train into Metro Center where it would be evacuated. We moved slowly forward with halting movements until the platform came into sight. The operator broadcast to the waiting passengers to move back from the train, this train was out of service. The doors opened and a hurried, albeit hasty evacuation was made. The smell of burning electrical insulation followed the train into the station. The passengers aboard the train all disbursed, already knowing that there was no proceeding on Metro this day. Passengers on the platform still waited to board our disabled train. I told people as I passed by them on my way out, "this train is definitely out of service. It is going nowhere soon."

Smoke rose up through the station at Metro Center smelling of electrical burning. There was not visible flames coming off the train at that point. I paused at the mezzanine to look back at the train that still sat at the platform and the crowds of commuters on both platforms who would be finding a different path to work this morning. Nothing seemed untoward and the whole scene quite benign. By the time I reached the street, fire engines were screaming their way to Metro Center and Gallery Place in response to the " Disruption at Metro Center in both directions. Trains sharing same track btwn Judiciary Sq. & Farragut N due to an earlier situation at Metro Center. Delays both directions." So this is what they mean when they say…

Dear Mr. Presient:

2009-09-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

September 5, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

My health is not for sale to Republican profit motivations.

In this year 2009 once again the cause of health care for people in this land has reared its ugly head. Even with the recent loss of 7 million jobs in this country there are those Legislators who decry expanded health care as Socialist and a scourge to be purged. Those 7 million jobs were typically attached to family households of 4 persons. Most private health insurance premiums are paid by employers on behalf of the employees. So go figure. There are potentially 28 million people in this country who might just now be losing their beloved private health insurance coverage. Since there are a lot of businesses that never paid for health insurance, we can easily half that number and still have a huge population of citizens newly without private health insurance.

A high school era buddy of mine is an early retiree. Such a person is old enough to consider stopping primary employment but who is not yet eligible for Medicare at age 65. He reports that his privately funded private health insurance coverage costs him and his wife $1850 per month. Excluding the annual cost increases that he says is on the order of 10% a year, he will pay nearly $200,000 between now and Medicare eligibility. And this is assuming that some catastrophic event doesn’t intervene and cause termination of the policy by the business that holds his health in their private hands.

President Obama stated his goals of creating a health care coverage overhaul that would allow everyone to have access to medical services before their conditions go critical and we have to fund their costly recovery via Medicaid. He did not specify how the legislation would be worded nor what exactly the Bill would contain. His plan allowed the Congress to work it our as a bi-partisan effort to help the growing population of families and individuals who had no access to medical services until they arrived at an emergency room and could not leave under their own power.

The Democratic legislators set to the task of crafting such a plan while the Republican legislators boycotted the process and said that the Democrats would have to proceed without them. How can it be that there are no Democrats living in Republican districts and states?. How can it be that no Republican constituent is without adequate private health insurance paid for by their employers? How can it be that access to medical treatment is a partisan issue worthy of universal objection by one particular political party?

Republican legislators need to hear from their Republican electoral base that they too need access to adequate affordable medical care. My health is not for sale to Republican profit motivations.

Sincerely,

Robert Carlson

Fear is Trump

2009-08-30T13:22:00.001-07:00

Fear is Trump

The behaviors of people speaking against health care reform that would benefit millions of people made me realize that they are so afraid of the "death squads" allegedly in the health care reform legislation because it gives voice to the idea of the convenient death for a declining elderly parent or spouse and how that death would bring respite from years of the hearthache of caring for that loved one with Alzheimers, alcholism, Cancer-chemo, etc. The desire for escape is unthinkable and results in a cognitive dissonance and outpouring of anger and denial.

Each political party in the US has its share of special interests who lobby them to see the current issues in a light that is agreeable to the interest groups. When hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, are at stake the battleground is everyone everywhere. Each citizen is a marker that is placed in one column or another to represent the interests that are being influenced. Fear being a powerful agent is employed most effectively in these cases. Unfortunately our human susceptibility to fear makes us vulnerable to they who would use it as a weapon as opposerd to a defense. Fear cannot be used to promulgate a good and happy thing. Love and kindness can do that. The problem is that fear is trump in the cardgame of politics.

Thoughts on the relative Good of something.

2009-07-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

The gravity that holds the planets in their clockwork paths and pulls the tides will one day crash another asteroid into our planet.

Gravity that makes it possible for hot air to rise, clouds to float high above our heads and people to stand sideways at the equator also kills us when we slip off the precipice.

Wind drag that slows our cars and makes us consume more gasoline also makes it possible for birds to soar and airplanes to fly.

Fire that warms our bodies and makes food more palatable will also consume our homes and sleeping children.

The sun that raises water from the oceans to make rain upon the land will also burn our skin and make cancers that will kill us.

Alcohol that makes us feel good and sociable will also make it easy to crash our cars.

The aperture (of our eyes) severely limits the amount of what we can see but it makes images possible at all.

Food will sustain our lives but too much will make us fat.

Nuclear powerplants give us electricity without carbon loading of the atmosphere but it leaves us with 10,000 years of toxic radiation wastes.

Morphine makes a crushed limb bearable to live with while it heals but it can also take over ones life and destroy it.

A stick of dynamite can clear an ice jammed river or bring horror to a open-air market.

A child can be a beautiful being to behold who grows up to be a great teacher or the next serial murderer.

Taxes can fund medical services for all, build great cities in which to live, support higher education and buy bullets and bombs to kill and destroy.

Fossil fuels have made our society possible and raised humankind from the muck and mire but it also heats our biosphere to a point where we may not continue to comfortably live.

Herbicides, Pesticides and fertilizers make the present-day crop yields possible to feed the world, but these same agents slowly modify and kill our bodies.

Death causes us grief and sorrow at the loss of loved ones, but without it we would not be able to live on this planet for very long.

Life without death would cause horrors beyond comprehension.

Decay dismantles all of our edifices, turns virile bodies into frail elderly adults, and spoils our food but without it where would a dead rat go? Ten million dead rats?

If this world was perfect how could anything move?

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen.

The heavy elements were crushed into existence in the center of dying stars that exploded and gave us carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, nickel, iron, arsenic, plutonium, uranium…

Nuclear reactors make heat for steam to generate electricity and they make plutonium for bombs.

A bullet can save you from a predator or take the life of your spouse in the heat of anger.

Vulnerable Profile

2009-07-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

The events that unfolded in Cambridge during the week in July 22, 2009 are similar to hundreds (if not thousands) of events that have played out in this country over many decades, in many cities, towns and communities across this nations. They were events that are not supposed to happen any more but ultimately still do. A black man is arrested by a white police officer for some reason (legitimate or not) and a lot of people weight in with their opinions as to that legitimacy without knowing what actually happened.

I go on the record as saying I don’t know what happened. I can say why, however. At least one participant did not use the best judgment in his/her actions. This includes ALL the people who weighed in on the matter without considering the ramifications of their statements. If profiling is a factor in this debacle, just who has profiled who? Did the white office use a profile to determine the threats of Mr. Gates. Did the President of the United States use a color profile on the officer as a “blue pig”? Hasn’t a lot of Americans profiled this same officer as being offensive to African-American men?

In the CNN web stories they stated: Dennis O'Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, also took aim at Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who reportedly has characterized the arrest as "every black man's nightmare and a reality for many black men." I believe that it is immaterial whether this arrest was legitimate or not, the scenario remains a nightmare for innocent men who find themselves in any situation where an office of the law is involved. Therefore, Govenor Patrick’s statement is valid.

CNN continued with: “Echoing the words of Crowley, O'Connor said he was dismayed that the president and governor would opine on the issue without all the details.” Yes it is important to get the facts first, something that (here comes an opinion) most news outlets and sources have eschewed Post-Cronkite.

It is fortunate that Mr. Gates was not hearing impaired or did not reach for his wallet to provide identification and that Sgt. Crowley was not either Sean Carroll or Edward McMellon. What a nightmare it would be to be hit by 19 of forty bullets because of the impressions in the minds of a group of armed men.

Tough situations that go from bad to worse where one or both or all parties are incrementally wrong in their actions deserve apologies and all attempts to defuse the matter before they go really sour. Emotions seem to lead the way after they are first sparked.

I agree that minority males are disproportionately at risk for maltreatment and that constitutes a Vulnerable Geometry for which there is no excuse. We have a long way to go toward equality for everyone. Our only explanation is that our laws are less than 50 years old that assert that equality. Our Constitution is only 233. These documents are supposed to undo several thousand years of “an eye-for-an-eye” attitude. And this assumes that everyone actually believes in those ideals and wants to abide by them

Carlson's Backyard

2009-05-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

The night was alive with the sounds of ten thousand crickets whose chorus filled the air with a constant droning, interjected by an occasional new voice like a castanets being shaken for a moment then let fall silent. A lone firefly flashed from its death trap in a web at the corner of my deck. He wasn't supposed to be there at all considering that the season was mid-September.

I, with my imported beer and sourdough pretzel nuggets, sat in the crossed beams of light from the two deck lights that hung on black poles above the deck high in the branches of the trees and sniffed the warm damp night and inhaled the essence of the evening.

Beyond the forest, beyond the deck and the penetration of the incandescent bulbs a crowd of people and the occasional dog enjoyed the throbbing sounds of recorded music played a bit too loud. Their excitement filtered through the trees and found my ears. The mechanizations of the music ebbed and flowed with a light breeze that made the flames of my citronella candles flicker. Their light combined with the illumination of the overhead deck lamps that made twin opposing half shadows that when combined, made a deeper shadow.

The moon at half phase peered through the still green leafed trees and added its meager rays to the scene. The sky was still discernibly less black than the underside of the canopy of trees that blocked the moonlight. Except for the loss of one broad tree last year during the rain of Floyd, the moon would have been hidden from my view entirely.

A sudden movement in the corner of my eye drew my attention to a leaf that moved contrary to the affect of the light breeze. Something fluttered there. It settled to a stop and became invisible to my human eyes. But when it moved, my perceptions locked in on the discontinuity of movement. After a moment or two it leapt into the air and fluttered comically as it approached my position. It disappeared from view under my crossed knee. Where did it go? Did it continue, unseen to somewhere else or did land where I couldn't see it? What was this large nocturnal fluttering anyway?

I backed up a bit to see if it was stopped on the deck before me. As my eyes adjusted focus, I saw the eyes and thin neck and triangular head of a brown praying mantis peering from around the curvature of my knee. She stood erect and stationary. Her triangular head that was half eyes turned slowly to survey the surroundings. I though about how she would eat hundreds of destructive insects and her mates to conceive her brood of tiny manti. After a long mutual scoping out of each other, she departed in a great flourish of wings and sheaths that made her flight seem haphazard. She landed on the side of my house near the eves and above the copper figure of Kokopele. There she waited for the occasional insect that would make her meal.

The night air was filled with pheromones of which I have no perception. The chemical lures and trails that the insect world can apprehend is a blank dark night to me. I can only imagine that the attractions of pheromones is like a beacon of light in the distance that grows ever brighter and more distinct as one draws nearer.

From beyond the globular light of the bulbs that hang above the deck under their green domes, I could see the lone bulb of light at my neighbor's back door. It signaled a point in space that has significance.

A second mantis fluttered across the clear blackness of the night illuminated in the incandescence that bathed the deck and landed in the garden of balloon flowers that have gone to seed. She clung to the stalks and walked her slow rocking gait to gain the advantage over an unsuspecting meal.

Something else was nagging at my vision. Occasionally other leaves moved suddenly. Their illuminated tops sides were green in the deck light and the under sides black with the night. It leapt into the air and fluttered to a new perch in the darkened branches. A leaf wobbled contrary to the light breeze and hung a bit lower than before. There it was again. From one branch to another it, they hopped. Then in one long extended fluttering, it flew toward me. I waited for it to descend and alit. It looked like a green leaf folded along the center vein, except for the legs. It landed on my shoe, the one crossed above my knee where I could readily see this fellow. It rested only a moment and was gone.

With my beer all gone and my candles burning low, I decided to head back inside. A train whistled in the valley beyond the woods and fell silent. Beyond the world of my back yard made visible by the electric lights suspended above, something else still, waited and watched. Silently it hovered, out there. It made a light fluttering at the edge of my auditory perceptions. It was coming toward me.

When Did It all Begin?

2008-12-14T13:29:00.000-08:00

When Did It All Change? posted: Dec 14, 2008

This question is posted across several blogs because it applies to all the subjects of those blogs. It's All Tuna begs the answer to when did everything become Tuna and why? The Principle of Imminent Collapse has presented many examples of the principle in action, but why is it that we repeatedly fail to do anything about it? Is THAT another of the characteristics of the PIC? And the Vulnerable Geometry is only vulnerable because we construct it that way. Why?

This post seeks to elicit examples of when it all began and what evidence, albeit in retrospect, can be seen that has led us from the Before to the Now. An example of this question and answer is thus: People driving on the road today are so rude, ignorant and aggressive that they endanger everyone around them and sometimes commit murder over simple things. When did this start and what caused it to happen?

With that in mind, what is the answer to these:

When and why did it become more important to make a profit than to make a product or service that made life better for people?
When and why has sex replaced love? Songs in the 1950s and earlier were all about love and relationships. The 1960s saw some transition. The 1970s and on it is sheer sex and show.
We used to see starving children and mobilize efforts to save Biafrans. Rock stars sang and did benefit concerts. We had Farm Aid. We had Feed the Children. Now we hardly even know the place called Darfur. What has happened?

If the answers were simple, we would have solved our problems already. But identifying the causes and the time line is an essential step in getting to that goal.

Vulnerable Geometry at Blogspot

Sustainable Geometry at Blogspot

It's All Tuna! at Blogspot

Principle of Imminent Collapse at Blogspot

www.itsalltuna-blog.com

www.ThePIC-Blog.com

Sleeping over the Fire

2008-10-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Even our most primitive ancestors were not so dense as to build a fire in their cave and then take up sleeping above it. Well maybe a few did, but their lineage died out very quickly. Sleeping above the fire was one of those innovations that did not get revived until the nineteenth century when we became convinced that we knew what was good and not good in residential construction practice.

Soon every house that had a basement also had a furnace there that burned some fuel or other and conducted the heat to the rooms above. So confident we are that we allow ourselves to easily fall asleep with the fire down below. "The Fire in the Night" is an all too oft occurring tragedy that results from a primitive understanding of a very modern Vulnerable Geometry.

A Vulnerable Geometry

2008-10-19T11:27:00.000-07:00

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We all are precariously perched on a ledge that sits high above the urban streetscape below. Many people and things act upon us that conspire to make us fall. The wind blows, our attention wonders, the precision of our movements become erratic or sloppy. It is then that we are most vulnerable.

Our relationships with other people, too, place us in a vulnerable geometry where heartache and failure become commonplace. Just as admitting that one has a problem is the first step in solving it, recognizing that one is in a VG allows us to begin to remedy the situation and avoid them in the future.