195.3 - Not Good News: Amtrak again starved of funds to invest in improvements

Not Good News: Amtrak again starved of funds to invest in improvements

Okay, now for the Not Good News part of this.

Right at the top, the funding levels for Amtrak in this bill are just that: level. As happens time and again, Amtrak gets enough to survive, but not enough to truly invest in improvements. And that level funding, when you allow for inflation, means a cut in actual ability to invest, improve, and maintain. For one specific example, it is going to make it difficult for Amtrak to update its aging rolling stock. Which is likely to hurt ridership in the longer run - after all, who wants to ride in an old, worn-out train - which I expect will be used as ammunition by the train-haters in the next assault on passenger rail.

Another and perhaps more important issue is that the bill achieves a long term goal of the train-haters, who have been angling for this since sometime during the Bush years: It separates Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service, which runs between Boston and Washington, from its long-distance routes around the rest of the country.

Why is that important? Because the Northeast Corridor is the only Amtrak line that makes a profit - which is unusual in itself because very few passenger rail lines anywhere in the world make a profit even when you limit the calculation to "above the rails," that is, to operating costs and don't include infrastructure costs such as for maintaining the rails and railbed and so on.

In the past, Amtrak has used the profits from the Northeast Corridor to subsidize some of the other lines. But the new bill blocks that: Any profits from the Northeast Corridor must be spent on improving service in the Northeast Corridor, starving every other line of needed support, the results of which will I guarantee will be used to fill another ammo box for the train-haters, whose entire attitude comes down to "well, I don't ride the train, so screw 'em."

By the way, would it surprise you to know that the Northeast Corridor is also the Amtrak route most often used by corporate executives and members of Congress, particularly between DC and New York? Probably not.

Making a virtue of necessity, the Midwest High Speed Rail Network said the clause about the Northeast Corridor could actually help in the longer term by boosting pressure to increase spending nationally.

I sincerely doubt that will happen but here's hoping that on this, their instincts are better than mine.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/fido-and-fluffy-may-be-your-amtrak-seatmates-under-house-measure
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/house-passes-amtrak-bill-boost-northeast-service-29393649
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150305/BLOGS02/150309888/all-aboard-house-votes-to-continue-funding-amtrak

195.2 - Good News: Amtrak is funded

Good News: Amtrak is funded

So now we have one of those Good News-Bad News deals. We'll do the good news first.

In a rare bipartisan vote, last week the House voted to approve continued funding for Amtrak. The bill authorized $7.2 billion in support for passenger rail service over the next four years, of which some $5.6 billion, about $1.4 billion per year, would go to Amtrak.

The vote was 316 to 101, with all Dimcrats and a majority of GOPpers voting yes. Passage came after a attempt to strip all funding for Amtrak, a measure that would have killed national passenger rail service, was soundly defeated, 147 to 272.

Once again, the attempts to kill Amtrak - which by the way, was never supposed to survive; it was supposed to fail and has been systematically starved of investment from the get go - but the attempts to kill it have failed because even conservative GOPpers from  some of the reddest of states know that Amtrak is their only reasonable means of long-distance transportation and their constituents know it.

Amtrak survives. That's Good News. So let's get on board.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150305/BLOGS02/150309888/all-aboard-house-votes-to-continue-funding-amtrak
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/fido-and-fluffy-may-be-your-amtrak-seatmates-under-house-measure
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/05/1368719/-Yesterday-House-Democrats-saved-Amtrak-proving-again-that-they-re-the-only-ones-governing
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2005/03/it-doesnt-take-much.html

Left Side of the Aisle #195

Left Side of the Aisle
for the week of March 13-19, 2015

Good News: national museum in Baghdad reopens
http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/iraq-museum#.tqzODdY4O

Good News: Amtrak is funded
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150305/BLOGS02/150309888/all-aboard-house-votes-to-continue-funding-amtrak
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/fido-and-fluffy-may-be-your-amtrak-seatmates-under-house-measure
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/05/1368719/-Yesterday-House-Democrats-saved-Amtrak-proving-again-that-they-re-the-only-ones-governing
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2005/03/it-doesnt-take-much.html

Not Good News: Amtrak again starved of funds to invest in improvements
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/fido-and-fluffy-may-be-your-amtrak-seatmates-under-house-measure
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/house-passes-amtrak-bill-boost-northeast-service-29393649
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150305/BLOGS02/150309888/all-aboard-house-votes-to-continue-funding-amtrak

Update: Child Protective Services accuses parents of "unsubstantiated child neglect" for letting their children walk home from a local park
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/1919-clown-award-kermit-elementary.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/03/02/meitiv_decision_cps_finds_free_range_parents_responsible_for_unsubstantiated.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/decision-in-free-range-case-does-not-end-debate-about-parenting-and-safety/2015/03/02/5a919454-c04d-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/raising-children-on-fear/2015/02/13/9d9db67e-b2e7-11e4-827f-93f454140e2b_story.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/02/just-wondering.html

The 47 Senators who signed the letter to Iran are tying to provoke a war
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/03/09/gop-senators-warning-over-us-iran-nuclear-negotiations/21151149/
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/10/Iran-Pushes-Back-Against-Senate-GOP-Letter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/senate-iran-deal_n_6832706.html
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/03/backstabbing-republicans-publish-open
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/tom-cotton-iran_n_6831328.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time

RIP: Minnie Minoso
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2015/03/01/chicagos-1st-black-major-league-baseball-player-minoso-dies/24218219/
http://minoso.com/
http://time.com/3727958/major-league-baseballs-first-black-latino-star-minoso-dies/
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-minnie-minoso-20150302-story.html

Obama's lovely little war: US to allow export of armed drones
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/232045-republican-pushes-drones-for-jordan
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/233003-us-okays-sale-of-armed-drones

And Another Thing: researchers find fish living beneath 740 meters of ice
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/510126/Ross-Ice-Shelf
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/discovery-fish-live-beneath-antarctica/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthly-extremophiles-prompt-speculation-about-alien-life/?WT.mc_id=SA_SPC_20150205

And Another Thing: researchers make quantum photograph of light as wave and particles simultaneously
http://news.discovery.com/tech/photo-first-lights-captured-as-both-particle-and-wave-150302.htm

Environmental credit where it's due

Updated One good thing Obama offered in the SOTU was a continued commitment to high-speed passenger rail. In particular, he proposed to have 80% of Americans have access to that form of travel within 25 years.

The proposal, however, worthy as it is on its own merits, is not without its difficulties and shortcomings and I'm not referring to financial or technological problems but problems in the proposal itself. The central one is inherent: Its focus is on the glitzy toys of 220-mph trains running in high-traffic areas rather than on building and maintaining an actual nationwide intercity mass-transit system; that is, a national modern railroad system. The National Association of Railroad Passengers put it more delicately but with the same botton-line point:

“The National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) pledges to support the President’s visionary plan for high-speed rail” said Ross Capon, president of NARP. “And we are asking the President—along with the rest of the nation’s leaders and transportation officials—to work towards expanding the existing intercity passenger rail network to give 100 percent of Americans access to reliable, modern train service.”

The real goal, that is, should not be 80% having access to high-speed trains but 100% having access to good trains.

The other problem is a bit more subtle but still quite real: Focusing on high-speed rail actual undermines rather than advances that broader goal. What's envisioned is a relatively few regional hubs with rail lines reaching out like spokes to other cities in the region, an arrangement whose primary purpose seems to be making it more convenient for business travelers than taking planes. It proposes, that is, to enhance regional train travel at the expense of long-distance train travel. Want to go from Milwaukee to Chicago? You're cool; take the train. Want to go from Boston to Chicago? Um, yeah, you're still gonna fly.

Over the long term, the idea, supposedly, is to link those hubs into a single network, but the economic and environmental questions of completely revamping our rail system just to do the regional hubs are so great that anyone who thinks that we can skip the long-distance trains and get back to them later - especially when the criterion is "better than flying" - is dreaming. In fact, I think that is so obvious that I have trouble believing those pushing for high-speed rail don't see it.

A related point is that we have been here before. This is very similar to the notion advanced by the Shrub gang back in 2005-2006 and again in 2007-2008 as part of its attempts to dismantle Amtrak, just without the panache of high-speed rail: They proposed to break it into a series of disconnected regional lines. And then as now, the primary concern seems to be how to get business travelers from one place to another in the shortest time.

There's another "same as it ever was" aspect to this: The Shrub gang wanted to "split off" the Northeast corridor, which would effectively wreck the system. Now we have this:

Sitting beneath the famous zodiac mural of Grand Central’s main concourse, with the rumble of commuters and trains in the background, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held its first field hearing of the new session this morning. The topic was the future of high-speed rail on the Northeast Corridor.

Chairman John Mica led the committee’s Republicans towards what appears to be their emerging message on high-speed rail: they’re for it, so long as it’s built through public-private partnerships and largely limited to the dense Boston-Washington corridor.

While I'm tempted to think that this is because it's the line these people are the most likely to use, I think the real reason is more fundamental: The Northeast corridor was and remains Amtrak's only profitable long-distance line. So of course private industry, which abandoned passenger rail, which deliberately drove it into the ground to justify doing so, now that government has proven this line can be run profitably which of course we can't have, we can't have the government being able to do anything well, of course private industry is to be brought in as a "partner." Of course it's time for another "public-private partnership," which generally means, as here, public investment and private profit.

In fact, the comparison with the Bush years is even closer, as some voices want to throw the whole thing into private hands. One is the US High Speed Rail Association, which wants the Northeast corridor privatized. In an interview with Fox Business, Andy Kuhns, president of the group, said:

We're pushing for some private companies to come in and run the trains but we do need the new infrastructure to get the high-quality trains that are comparable to Europe and Japan.

Which rather blatantly translates to "Government, you do the work and pay the price to make it convenient; corporations, you take the profit."

Besides the obvious GOPpers and other right-wingers, the voices included former Pennsylvania governor (and Rachel Maddow favorite) Ed Rendell, who said

the federal government could lease the operational rights to a private company or sell the assets completely.

So even before any proposal is formally made by the White House, there is already bipartisan agreement that the future of public rail - isn't public. Not when there's a buck to be made.

Not everyone agrees, happily. Representative Nick Rahall, ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee,

said in his opening statement that a national rail network ought to remain the focus. “After all,” the West Virginia Democrat said,” it was a national vision that led to the creation of the world’s most advanced highway and aviation networks.”

He had already reacted to the SOTU by saying he

supports Obama’s call for more high-speed passenger rail spending as long as Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, doesn’t get left behind.

Which is exactly the risk I see and that the NARP hinted at.

(Rahall, by the way, was a cosponsor of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act a couple of years ago, which provided some stable funding for Amtrak for the first time by providing around $7.5 billion over five years. “Americans, especially West Virginians, love their railroads,” he said.)

Long-time readers here will likely know that I'm one of those who loves the trains. Not only do I agree with the old Cunard line ad slogan "Getting there is half the fun" or at least it damn well should be, I agree with the travel writer (link misplaced) who said the best way to see the US is from the windows of a train. I say it as I have before: When you fly, you see clouds. When you drive, you see pavement. When you take the train, you see scenery. And yeah, I do walk the walk: I've logged something over 35,000 miles on Amtrak and we're planning another trip.

Amtrak has been a whipping boy of the right ever since it was created, so much so that it has a bad reputation as an inefficient boondoogle - a reputation, while not entirely undeserved in the early years, is now held mostly by people who have never ridden it.

What's not well-known even among its fans, though, is that it was never intended to succeed. In fact, it was set up to fail. How, you ask? Simple: The (claimed) idea was that Amtrak would, after a couple of years of declining subsidies, break even and "stand on its own." But that was a fool's errand and everyone involved either knew it and didn't care, didn't know it and didn't care, or knew it and looked forward to the failure.

[Amtrak] has struggled ever since it was formed," said John Spychalski, a transportation expert and professor of supply chain management at Pennsylvania State University.

He said Amtrak has been systematically starved of investment over the years and subject to unrealistic expectations that it could somehow get up on its own feet and become a profitable enterprise. "You cannot operate intercity rail service at a profit," he said.

Some individual lines may make money "above the rail," excluding the cost of basic infrastructure and maintenance, but "there is no way those systems as a whole are going to make money on passenger traffic," he said.

In fact, there is hardly an example any time anywhere in the world where intercity passenger rail has made money "above the rail" and none have done so when the other costs are considered. Amtrak was set up to be a failure.

But it has survived. Just barely sometimes, scraping by, but it has survived because it has proved sufficiently popular - increasingly popular, it would appear, as ridership was up 14% in November over the year before - that the wingnuts have been unable to kill it. Like the man said, "Americans love their railroads." The very fact that it has survived, it has done better than was expected, that it has even improved, is precisely why the wackos of the right hate it and why they are again trying to kill it. As part of its maniacal plan to slash government spending, the Republican Study Committee has proposed

eliminating federal subsidies for Amtrak ($1.6 billion annually), the Transportation Department's New Starts program for commuter rail and rapid transit systems ($2 billion annually), and all grant programs for intercity and high-speed rail ($2.5 billion annually).

So it's not good enough to spin visions of bullet trains and 220-mph trains getting you from one city to another faster than you can read your paper while at the same time failing to openly and aggressively support long-distance public rail as well as regional public rail. Not when the real system we already have is under threat.

Let me be clear: Obama's support for high-speed rail can't be doubted. Remember that the stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, included $8 billion for related projects around the country, an investment which is already starting to show results in a number of those areas. I have no doubt he is sincere in his desire for the "80% access to high-speed rail" goal.

But high-speed is not the only issue here and, putting it perhaps overly-colorfully, in considering mass rapid transit we shouldn't - in fact we can't, we dare not - put all the emphasis on the "rapid" to the detriment of the "mass."

Updated with a Footnote: Coincidentally, the day before this was posted the Wrexham & Shropshire line, which since 2008 had run trains from Marylebone Station in London to the town of Wrexham in northern Wales, closed down despite getting extraordinarily high ratings from its riders. What makes this relevant is that the line was one of three in the whole of the UK that ran without a government subsidy - and despite the high approval ratings, the company that ran it felt there was no chance it could be made profitable.

Which just goes to show yet another time that if you want to have an environmentally-friendly, efficient, intercity mass rapid transit system - that is, a modern railroad - you have to have public investment. Which is one of the reasons right-wingers hate it.

In fact, some news is actually good

As I imagine long-time readers know, I'm a big fan of train travel in general and Amtrak in particular. A reasonable guess is that I've run up over 35,000 miles traveling the US by rail and one of my big dreams remains taking the Trans-Canada railway from Halifax all the way to Vancouver. Like I say, "When you fly, you see clouds. When you drive, you see pavement. When you take the train, you see scenery."

So it did me good to see this from the Washington Post:

Amtrak carried a record 28.7 million people in the past fiscal year, with each of its routes seeing gains, the national passenger railroad said Friday.

The company has posted six years of ridership and revenue growth. The number of trips over the past 12 months increased 11 percent over the 25.8 million taken in fiscal 2007.

Total ticket revenue for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 reached $1.7 billion - also a record for the 37-year-old government-owned corporation and a 14 percent increase over the $1.5 billion taken in the previous year.

Both short distance, "corridor" services and long-distance trains saw increases. The Northeast Corridor, Boston-DC, saw ridership go up 9%; the high-speed Acela service on that line went up 6.5%. The Hiawatha Service between Chicago and Milwaukee, up 26% over last year. The Keystone Service, New York City-Philadelphia-Harrisburg, a 20% increase. Ridership went up 31% on the Downeaster, Portland(ME)-Boston. The Texas Eagle, a long-distance train from Chicago to San Antonio, had a 15% ridership increase and the Empire Builder, running between Chicago and Portland-Seattle, had 10% more passengers. Other lines also posted double-digit gains.

Even better,

[e]arlier this month, Congress passed legislation that sets funding targets of $13 billion over five years in a major vote of confidence for the company. ...

The bill also calls for about $1.9 billion in federal matching grants to states for rail projects.

It's a dramatic increase in funding and even Shrub, who has repeatedly tried to kill Amtrak, is expected to sign it - probably because Congressional support was so overwhelming, passing both houses by clearly veto-proof majorities.

Footnote: A writer at the travel site Jaunted.com has some "where do we go from here" proposals for Amtrak, including a new system of passenger rails so Amtrak no longer has to share the rails with freight trains - a good idea but likely prohibitively expensive - and, even less plausibly, double-wide trains. But who cares? It's good to be able to think about Amtrak and long-distance rail travel in terms other than their survival.

Amtraking the progress made

As I expect long-time readers know, I am a big fan of Amtrak and of train travel in general. So I found this from columnist Derrick Jackson, writing in the Boston Globe earlier this week, a happy observation:

Train travel is finally becoming a third rail of politics. ...

Suddenly, the traveling public is demanding the development of commuter and high-speed intercity rail. According to the American Public Transportation Association, light rail (streetcars) was up 10 percent in the first quarter of this year, commuter rail was up by 6 percent, and subways were up 4 percent (Boston subway travel was up by 9 percent).

And Amtrak, perpetual whipping boy of the "government can't do anything right" crowd, has seen its ridership up 11% over this point last year, a year that saw a ridership of nearly 26 million, an all-time record for the service - in fact, the fifth straight all-time record. Demand was so high over the July 4 travel period that people in Washington DC had trouble getting seats because the trains were all booked.

Meanwhile, travel writers are starting to have nice things to say about long-distance train travel.

Things are up enough that the New York Times has suggested that Amtrak's biggest problem may be an inability to expand fast enough to meet the rising demand. While that may well be true in the short term, in the slightly longer term, say five years, there is reason for optimism: Last October the Senate passed an $11.4 billion authorization over five years for passenger rail projects, including Amtrak, by a veto-proof 70-22. The House followed up in mid-June with a $14.4 billion, five-year, authorization package, passed by another veto-proof majority of 311-104. The portion of each directed to Amtrak would be double to almost triple the funding rate it has received the past several years, enabling significant investment in both new rolling stock and infrastructure improvements.

These of course are authorizations, not appropriations, so there may still be a fight ahead. Still, the overwhelming majority in each house of Congress has declared a willingness to make a sufficient commitment to passenger rail such that this very efficient means of transportation will do more than just squeak by in the face of yearly attempts to kill it altogether. There are good odds that a final appropriations bill will be passed this year that will contain a significant increase in funding for passenger rail. As Derrick Jackson said, "The luster of austerity is gone." And that is a very good thing.

Footnote: That New York Times article contained two bits that serve to point out the continuing political (as opposed to financial or operational) difficulties facing Amtrak.

This is one:

H. Glenn Scammel, a former head of staff of the rail subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the railroad should give up on some of its cross-country trains and redeploy the equipment on relatively short intercity trips, where it could provide enough frequency to attract new business. (Providing one train a day in each direction will not draw many new business travelers.)

Let's leave aside the fact that Scammel is not a member of Congress, he's a staffer - indeed, as near as I can tell, a former staffer. All of which makes him someone who in normal circumstances would be unlikely to be quoted. Let's also skip the fact that the National Association of Rail Passengers says "Scammel spent much of his House career badmouthing the long-distance trains." Let's just consider what he said. First, as the NARP notes, long-distance cars are not designed for short-distance travel and so can't just be "redirected." Second, Scammel's proposal is one of the old ones repeatedly offered up, essentially, for the purpose of dismantling Amtrak by envisioning rail travel as a series of disconnected hubs linking local cities - that is, seeing it in the same way that air travel is largely thought of now: as a means of moving business people around, just in this case between points too close to be convenient for flying.

Third, consider how odd it was for the Times to include this argument, presented as a means to achieve the apparently it goes without saying necessary end of "attract[ing] new business," in particular, new business travelers, in an article mainly about how demand for rail travel is already increasing so rapidly that Amtrak may have trouble meeting it. I can't help but suspect this is a rather revealing non sequitur, considering that the article was part of the Times' business coverage.

This is the other:

When Amtrak began operating 37 years ago, the plan was for it to eventually break even.

That is complete bunk. In fact, the plan was for it to fail, to last just long enough to justify pulling the plug without making it too obvious that the intent was to for all practical purposes shut down the system. It was demanded of Amtrak that it do what almost no other passenger rail system in the world had ever done, and I mean that literally: make a profit on intercity passenger rail travel. It would have been helpful if in writing about Amtrak the reporter knew what he was talking about.

It's a real mass out there

This has got to be one of those situations that "every dark cloud has a silver lining" was created to deal with. Saturdays's New York Times reports that

[w]ith the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

“In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,” said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. ...

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges - of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year - are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Of coure, no good news goes unpunished, so the article also reports that meeting the increased demand is proving dificult because of delining tax revenues, higher fuel costs, and rising prices for steel needed for expansion. Still, it's good environmental (and fuel efficiency and global warming) news that mass transit use is increasing and in fact has been for a time:

The sudden jump in ridership comes after several years of steady, gradual growth. Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, up 2.1 percent from 2006. Transit managers are predicting growth of 5 percent or more this year, the largest increase in at least a decade.

It's appropriate that this story came out on May 10 because it's National Train Day. The event was organized by Amtrak to celebrate and promote rail travel. The day was chosen because it's the anniversary of the driving of the "golden spike" to mark the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, in 1869. The site is now a national park.

Amtrak is building on five straight years of record ridership despite the best attempts to the Bush gang to kill it off and the failure of Congress to adequately fund it. As the Detroit Free Press said last month,

Amtrak will serve a record 26 million riders this year, but Congress has consistently given the railroad hundreds of millions of dollars less than it needs to pay for capital improvements, including the replacement of worn track, repairing bridges and rebuilding rail cars.

President George W. Bush even tried to end federal assistance for passenger rail service. For next year, Bush has proposed cutting Amtrak by 40%, giving it half the $1.67 billion the agency is requesting. Amtrak spends $500 million a year on debt service alone. Bush's proposed $800 million for Amtrak would require the railroad to cut a large share of its 22,000 miles of service.

Put in perspective, the $1.67 billion Amtrak is requesting for the entire year is little more than the cost of one large planned highway project in metro Detroit: rebuilding seven miles of I-94 in Detroit.

Even so, Amtrak has managed to survive - something it was not expected to do; in fact, it was designed to fail. But it survived. It has been accused, abused, and misused, it has been the butt of jokes, it's path (and sometimes its travel) has been rockier than Marciano, Graziano, and Colavito together, at times it has barely scraped by in the face of simultaneous indifference and hostility, but it has survived. It even has some enthusiastic supporters (besides me, I mean), including a fair number of legislators from those "heartland" and "the real America" areas with which we elitist tree-hugger liberals supposedly have so little connection. For example, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was quite eager to announce that he was a cosponsor of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act to authorize Amtrak funding.

“Americans, especially West Virginians, love their railroads,” said Rahall. “Protecting and fully funding our railroads must be among our government’s top priorities. This bill provides a long-overdue infusion of funding needed to upgrade and rehabilitate our Nation’s rail network and, once again, give Amtrak a needed boost.” ...

“Rising gas prices and air travel delays have spurred a return to rail travel,” said Rahall. “At the same time, these record rail traffic levels are placing added pressure and safety concerns on our aging rail system. This legislation honors the important role railroads have played in our Nation’s history and the benefit they promise to our future by taking steps to improve and modernize our rail system to ensure its success for years to come.”

The bill, introduced with bipartisan support of committee leaders, would provide Amtrak with

$14.3 billion over five years, or an average of $2.86 billion annually, compared with the current budget of $1.2 billion.

What's more, some people want to expand the service: For one example, a coalition of folks - one which has obtained the support of the Kansas Department of Transportation - wants to extend the route of the Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Newton, Kansas, about 200 miles north. There it would link up with the route of the Southwest Chief, running between Chicago and Los Angeles.

So the fact is, a good number of people see a growing future for Amtrak; with a little investment, some even see "a golden opportunity for Amtrak to prove itself." Representative Rahall is right: Americans love their trains, love them too much to let them die. Much of that love is, admittedly, suffused with nostalgia, but it also is a love that increasingly is being overlaid with environmental realism and financial practicality.

Choo-choo!

Train wrecked

Amtrak's board of directors has fired President David Gunn. Gunn, while not a great favorite among rail advocates, had been successful in cutting costs and improving management on Amtrak and maintaining service on long-distance lines that the board wants to kill - eagerly pushed by jackasses such as Transportation Secretary (and Amtrak board member) Norman Mineta, whose repeated lies and fables about Amtrak would shame Baron von Munchhausen.

In fact, the board, backed by the Shrub gang, wants to shut down all long-distance lines and turn Amtrak into little more than a series of disconnected transportation hubs, useful primarily for ferrying business executives between cities that are too close for convenient air travel. In September, it even

approved a resolution authorizing splitting off the Northeast Corridor, which accounts for the largest share of the railroad's ridership.

That would destroy Amtrak and the board knows it. Gunn was not willing to destroy the system, so despite his aggressive cost-cutting, he's out.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who has fought against a Bush administration effort to end subsidies for the struggling passenger rail service, praised Gunn as "a brilliant manager."

The senator called Gunn's removal "a crushing blow to Amtrak's hopes for success and reform."

The praise is certainly overdone, but Schumer's underlying point that there is a conscious, on-going attempt to destroy long-distance passenger rail service in this country, a service which was never intended to succeed, is absolutely unquestionable.

I'd rather be on the train

At least that's what my bumper sticker from the National Association of Rail Passengers says. And it appears, contrary to my earlier expectations, I may still be able to do just that. This is from AP for Tuesday:

President Bush's plans to close down Amtrak's money-losing long distance routes were dealt another setback Tuesday as a Senate panel approved a sizable boost to the budget for the ailing railroad. ...

Amtrak received a $1.2 billion subsidy for the current year but the Senate measure would boost that to $1.4 billion for next year.

The White House had wanted to eliminate all operating subsidies, a move that would have forced the system into bankruptcy and a shutdown because the cost of closing down the lines that would be eliminated would exceed available funds. A Senate Appropriations Subcommittee now has rejected that approach. In addition,

[a]n attempt by the House Appropriations Committee to cut the railroad's budget by more than half and cut off subsidies for every cross-country route was reversed by the full House last month.

Taken together, the House and Senate actions make it plain that Congress simply doesn't have the stomach to close down Amtrak routes.

This is good news - tempered by the fact that the amounts being provided, assuming they come through intact, are enough to keep Amtrak going - barely. Once again, as keeps happening, Amtrak gets just enough help to survive but not enough to actually make the investments necessary to significantly improve its financial position. And next year, we'll go through the same arguments.

Another problem is that the proposal includes a provision to ban subsidies for food and beverage services, which currently lose money. But, as NARP points out, Amtrak officials have testified that "the primary purpose [of food and beverage service] is to enhance ticket sales and ridership, not serve as a profit center."

No matter, the desire is to dump them anyway, no matter what odd thinking is required. In fact, the argument for the elimination of food and beverage service borders on the bizarre. As NARP lays it out, the Transportation Department's Inspector General decided that because the average coach trip length is less than the average sleeping-car trip, coach passengers do not need the food services. Therefore, 100% of the associated costs can be attributed to sleeping-car passengers and therefore the services can be eliminated with zero impact on sales of coach tickets! This makes Zen riddles models of straightforwardness.

Don't be fooled for a minute: The purpose of all such restrictions is not to save Amtrak but to destroy it. It was never supposed to succeed. And the wackos won't give up trying to make it fail. But despite their efforts, despite the deceptions, despite the perpetual bad-mouthing (note that the article refers to "money-losing" routes of an "ailing" railroad which Congress "doesn't have the stomach" - i.e., lacks the guts - to kill; no allowance is made for the possibility that Amtrak might provide a valuable service and no reference is made to subsidies to roads and airports), it has, to their dismay, survived. May it continue to do so, may it expand.

I've previously written about Amtrak on March 20 and April 9; I suggest your check those out for a fuller background.

In addition to NARP, you might want to check out Friends of Amtrak and Save Amtrak.

A lie in the hand is worth two to the Bush

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, the Shrub gang is striving to drive Amtrak into bankruptcy by eliminating all federal funding for passenger rail service. Surprisingly, some of the strongest opposition comes from some of the "reddest" of states - or, truth be told, not surprisingly since in large areas of the west, Amtrak trains provide the only major long-distance transit service.

One such train is the Empire Builder, which runs from Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon, across the northern tier of the US, and down to Chicago. For some ski areas, such as Whitefish, Montana, the Empire Builder is the major - read the major - means for vacationers to get there. Loss of long-distance train service would have a devastating impact on the local economy.

As a result, Montanan officials, including the governor, lieutenant governor, a few mayors, and perhaps some of the Congressional delegation are staging a whistlestop tour across the state to publicize the concerns and endorse funding for the system. The Whitefish Pilot for April 5 added that

[t]he group has also decided to create a resolution that city councils could pass saying they oppose cutting Amtrak funds. [Whitefish mayor Andy] Feury said that details of the resolution are still being worked out, but that the hope would be that city councils all over the country would pass the same one.

Their goal, Feury said, is to not only save Amtrak funding this year, but to try and eventually get a plan in place that will take care of its funding needs into the future.

The White House idiots, however, are pushing ahead with their plans, which,

according to transportation department spokesman Brian Turmail, would have individual states kick in funding for Amtrak, with federal matching grants being awarded to those states that invest in improving their rail. ...

Turmail said that the administration plan would allow states where Amtrak is an important service to continue funding it, and that they would be encouraged to make upgrades by the federal grants.

"It's an incentive for states to improve their rail systems," he said.

This structure, he said, would then be more similar to the way the federal government funds highways and airports.

Wow. So much bull in so few words.

First, "their" rail? The rails are owned by private freight companies, not the states. One of the problems with Amtrak from the start has been that it had to contract with those private companies to gain access to the rail lines - and if that company decides that they'll make more money on a given day by allowing some slow freight to have priority, then the Amtrak passengers just have to sit and wait. Calling on the states to kick in more money for rail maintenance and improvement is actually calling for additional public subsidies to private corporations.

Second, considering the precarious financial condition of many states, this so-called "incentive" is rather like telling someone with terminal cancer that their insurance is being cut off as an "incentive" for them to improve their health.

Third, this would be "similar" to how the feds fund highways and airports if and only if the feds also fly the planes and drive the cars. Which, as far as I'm aware, they don't.

But here's the topper:

In answering a question during his Detroit press conference, [Secretary of Transportation Except for Trains Norman] Mineta asked how they could justify supporting a line, like the Montana section of the Empire Builder, when just 53 people a day use that service.

Amtrak serviced over 130,000 passengers in Montana last year, which averages out to about 350 passengers per day. According to Turmail, the number given by Mineta was "hypothetical," and was not intended to be taken as fact.

Not after he was caught in his lie, no. Which of necessity raises the question of just which of the administration's other figures about Amtrak are likewise "hypothetical?"

It doesn't take much...

...to get something by me, frankly, but this is one I should have caught.

Among the programs the Shrub gang's budget for Fiscal 2006 proposes to eliminate is federal support for Amtrak. It's been talked about before and other administrations have tried to do it before - but this time they may get away with it, especially since the Senate just voted down an amendment that would have provided $1.4 billion in subsidies.

The White House liars claim it's all about "putting Amtrak on a sound footing" - just like their Social Security plan is supposed to do for that program - and involves Amtrak becoming a holding company competing for business. What it would really mean is dumping of a significant part of the costs of maintaining passenger rail service onto already-overburdened states, in a number of which passenger rail might disappear altogether. It would also mean the end of long-distance trains and forcing Amtrak into bankruptcy, putting control of it in the hands of a trustee whose legal duty is to the creditors, not to the passengers.

This is insane. The idea that any industrialized nation can treat an intercity rapid mass-transit system - in short, a modern railroad - as a pointless frill to be indulged only if and where it can fatten investors' wallets is nothing short of a national embarrassment. But despite the fancy talk over the years about "helping Amtrak stand on its own," a frill is exactly how it's been treated since day one.

"[Amtrak] has struggled ever since it was formed," said John Spychalski, a transportation expert and professor of supply chain management at Pennsylvania State University.

He said Amtrak has been systematically starved of investment over the years and subject to unrealistic expectations that it could somehow get up on its own feet and become a profitable enterprise. "You cannot operate intercity rail service at a profit," he said.

Some individual lines may make money "above the rail," excluding the cost of basic infrastructure and maintenance, but "there is no way those systems as a whole are going to make money on passenger traffic," he said.

And it's not just here:

Even in Britain and other European countries where passenger rail service is far more integral to the overall transportation network, privatization efforts have met with mixed results at best.

The Wikipedia article on Amtrak notes that

[t]here have been few times in history when any intercity rail passenger operation in the world has been truly profitable, even with respect to only its operating costs, and passenger trains have never brought in enough revenue to pay for their infrastructure costs. Even highly efficient private-sector railroads such as the Norfolk and Western could not earn a profit, or even recover operating expenses for passenger service. The concept of Amtrak as a for-profit business was fatally flawed before the first passenger boarded. [emphasis in original]

That is, from the very beginning, Amtrak was expected to do what almost no other passenger rail system in the world had ever done. "Unrealistic expectations" hardly seems to describe it; "designed to fail" would be more accurate.

What's more, highways and airports, as is fairly well known, get massive subsidies. One measure of just how Amtrak has been treated is noted by the National Association of Rail Passengers (NARP):

[P]ublic policy is skewed against users of trains. The federal government provides a tiny (and diminishing) proportion of its transportation funding to rail - in 2003, $32 billion to highways (doubled in 20 years, accounting for inflation), $14 billion for aviation (more than doubled in 20 years), and barely $1 billion for Amtrak (cut more than a third in 20 years).

Wikipedia mentions a recent Congressional hearing during which Sen. John McCain (R-DemocratWishfulThinking) demanded an end to all operating subsidies for Amtrak. Current Amtrak president David Gunn asked

the Senator if he would also demand the same of the commuter airlines, upon whom the citizens of Arizona are much more dependent. McCain, usually not at a loss for words when debating Amtrak funding, did not reply.

And yet despite it all, Amtrak hasn't failed, at least not yet, because it has proved to be more popular and more useful than it was thought it could be.

But now it's under new threat, one that even involves going back on prior commitments: As 21 House GOP members noted in a March 3 letter to the chair of the House Budget Committee, just last June a new five-year financial plan for Amtrak was met with a promise from the White House for $1.4 billion in support for the service for each of the next four years. Apparently keeping their word to their own party members means no more to the Shrub team than keeping their word to anyone else does. Instead, they want to weave a

vision of creating a network of intercity rail hubs of 200 to 500 miles that would connect urban areas to airports and public transit systems.

Put more simply, they see railroads as a means to get you to and from the airport more efficiently.

That "vision" is wrong not only logically and environmentally (train travel is cleaner and more energy-efficient than plane travel) but, dammit, aesthetically. Full disclosure here: I've logged at least 26,000 miles on Amtrak and I do not want to see it go. There is, as they say, something about a train. Part of it, I admit, is that there is a certain romance about trains, perhaps even a certain pleasant nostalgia, that just doesn't stick to other means of transportation. But there's something more: When I travel, I want to enjoy the traveling. I don't want to just get somewhere as fast as humanly possible; I want to enjoy the getting and the coming back as well as the being there. For that, nothing beats a train. When you fly, you see clouds. When you drive, you see pavement. When you take the train, you see scenery.

And I just can't wait to get on the road again.

Footnote: In addition to the NARP, you may care to check out Friends of Amtrak, Save Amtrak, and the Amtrak Historical Society.

Thrown into reverse

The December 2 issue of The Hill informs us that

Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) sent a written apology this morning to GOP lawmakers whose transportation projects he stripped from the omnibus appropriations bill in retaliation for their endorsement of additional funding for Amtrak.

Istook, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, treasury and independent agencies, apologized for not communicating better with his colleagues and promised to rectify the situation.

"In the FY 05 appropriations cycle, I hoped to keep Amtrak from draining transportation funds from every Congressional district. I should have communicated with you better before I treated your request for major additional Amtrak funding as a higher priority than your other projects. I apologize," Istook wrote.

"I will do everything in my power to rectify this as promptly as possible, and to give your other requests every proper consideration," the letter continued.

It's really a non-apology apology since Isakook didn't apologize for screwing colleagues to punish them for supporting Amtrak and he still labels Amtrak as one among "your other projects," that is, as if it were a request for funding for a project in the screwees home districts. But the meaning remains abundantly clear: The projects slashed will be at least mostly restored.

Isakook's office insists, however, that he did this all by himself, with no, uh, prodding from others. And I suppose that is possible; after all,

[i]n December, Istook will have to face [Reps. Curt] Weldon [(R-PA)] and [John] McHugh [(R-NY)], both of whom sit on the House Republican Steering Committee, to plead his case for remaining a cardinal.

Several sources said that McHugh had to be physically restrained from Istook when he learned that his projects were struck from the bill.

Still, I wondered last Sunday if this was a sign of overreaching by the rightists and said

it will be interesting to see if in the wake of these two incidents the GOP House leadership will take any steps to rein in Isakook - which it appears they should do for their own, if not the country's, good.

Despite the assurances, I still kinda wonder if Isakook had to stand at his desk to write the notes.

The Dip of the Month award goes to...

...Rep. Ernest Istook (R-A cave somewhere), the man who wanted to have authority to look at everyone's tax returns then tried to dodge responsibility when he was caught - and who is also engaged in a foul attempt to kill Amtrak by punishing its supporters.

Via TalkingPointsMemo comes a link to the November 24 issue of The Hill, which tells us that Rep. Isakook

dispensed a little appropriator’s justice, punishing 21 Republicans who wrote him a letter in support of $1.8 billion for Amtrak.

Istook, chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies, drastically reduced, or entirely excised, the transportation earmarks that those lawmakers were expecting to receive, making good on a little-noticed threat he issued in a letter last February.

When members of the House wrote to Isakook supporting a call for $1.8 billion for Amtrak, he replied by sending a "Dear Colleague" letter said their support for Amtrak funding,

"even if submitted in a separate document, must and will be weighed against your other requests, and I will consider it as a project request for your district."

He made no other attempt to contact those members before their funding was cut, and many of them did not learn of his actions until after the bill passed.

That he's making a blatant attempt to intimidate members into not supporting Amtrak was not even denied by his office.

"Last year, they had 32 members sign the letter, and this year it was only 21, so some people got the message," [spokeswoman Micah] Ledorf said, adding that she expects even fewer public supporters for Amtrak funding in next year’s process.

Several of the Republicans whose projects he killed are considered vulnerable and this certainly will not help them maintain support in their home districts - which means his selfish, conceited, over-the-top, high-handed thuggery is actually risking the GOPper majority in the House.

There has been some speculation about whether their dominant position will lead the rightists to overreach, as has happened many times before to dominant parties. I suppose this could be a sign of it, one where the right wing of the GOPpers feels so much in control it doesn't even have to pay attention to its own party's (by comparison, at least) moderates. So it will be interesting to see if in the wake of these two incidents the GOP House leadership will take any steps to rein in Isakook - which it appears they should do for their own, if not the country's, good.

He's baaaack.....

Well, I'm back but not back with it, as you can see. They say travel broadens one, but I don't think broadening your waistline is what was originally intended by the phrase. But eight days on a train, taking in more scenery than you can actually absorb in that time, with surprisingly good food three times a day, will tend to have that beltline effect.

Thanks to all those who came back to see if I had; my return hit rate dropped to almost nothing while I was away, which is kinda to be expected when you tell folks you won't be around, but started to pick up again on Tuesday. So I'm flattered that people were checking and thank you for the attention. (On the other hand, my first-time hit rate went way up for a few days; I suspect it was because of what I wrote about the conspiracy theories surrounding Nick Berg's death, since "nick berg conspiracy" appear to have been the main search keywords by which people found the site. Oh, a sidebar on that, and another serious hit to the tinfoil-hat crowd: It develops that the orange jumpsuit Berg was wearing in the video is not standard issue US military prison clothing. Those jumpsuits have zippered fronts and breast pockets, neither of which Berg's did.)

There've been some things to deal with relating to work and personal life (yes, I do have one) that have kept me from jumping right back in, but no, I haven't disappeared and yes, I'm back safe and sound. Oh, and I'm not quite as derelict as it might seem: We missed a connection and so got back a day later than planned.

Riding through places ranging from cities like Chicago where you are just another single thread in the fabric - in fact, one that could be pulled with no damage to the whole - to small towns in northern Montana where frankly the daily passing of the Amtrak is still something of an event (Did you know that people still go out to wave at trains? How cool is that?), got me to thinking about the places we call home and their variety. I don't mean that in any "this great, big, beautiful land of ours" sense, but in an individual one, the idea that for each of us, there may be a place we feel we belong, a place that's home, not just a residence. John Denver said it in "Rocky Mountain High" when he referred to "coming home to a place he'd never been before." It's a place where we can, resorting to a cliche, set down roots.

It's not a matter of the size or the location, although they are part of it, it's a matter of the feel.

It occurs to me as I write this that this is something I've reflected on to one degree or another for a long time, not always to the same effect. In college, way, way back in the '60s, I wrote something I vaguely remember about a "rootless generation" emerging, consisting of young people who were not committed to a certain place and so were free - and I did present it as a form of freedom, something to be welcomed - to move about when, where, and as they would without being bound by things that were of their immediate environment but not of them. Their home, to put it another way, was inside them rather than around them.

In the years since I've come to wonder if I wasn't actually rationalizing my own sense of rootlessness. Well, not rationalizing, more like making a virtue of necessity. I've usually felt out of place everywhere I've been, like I didn't really fit in. I can come up with all kinds of Psych-101 reasons as to why (okay, I'm more adept than that; Psych-202), but they're really unimportant now. I remember once my first wife and I, while living in New England, visited her relatives at the Jersey shore (where we are both from). As we left one brother's house, she said something about "going home." I was somewhat taken aback, since we had planned to stay a few more days - until I realized she meant the motel. She was so adept at settling in wherever she was that she could refer to the motel where we'd been for three days as "home" without any seeming contradiction. I always envied that about her. Still do, in fact.

By contrast, I once said to her as we were arriving at our house after some errands, feeling unusually philosophical, that she had "no idea what it's like to look at the place where you've lived for seven years and feel like you don't belong there." She said "You're right - I don't." And she didn't. (I actually wrote something rather more personal about this whole feeling which I'm not going to include here; this is quite personal enough, thank you. But since I've gone this far, I'll offer to email it to anyone who wants for who knows what odd reason to see it.)

It may be - warning, more Psych-202 coming - that's part of the reason I like to travel: After all, when you travel it's natural to feel a bit out of place. That feeling of difference, of newness, hell, that's part of the allure.

There was, of course, a political side to these reflections as well, a side that hinted at a shift in perspective from my college days. This was written to a friend in the UK; the letter was dated November 29, 1993.

That, in turn, raises another issue which predates NAFTA (and GATT) but is closely connected to them: loss of community or, rather, the creation of what I call rootless workers. For a few decades now, capital has become more and more mobile, shifting from place to place more by electronic transfers than by the movement of actual bonds, bills, and coins. (You've heard of "virtual reality;" this is like virtual money.) Corporations have become freer than ever to chase around a country or the world, leaping from enterprise to enterprise, even industry to industry, in pursuit of profit. The result has been regional booms and busts as one area competes with others to see who could offer the most to Big Business in a downward spiral of self-flagellation that inevitably left the losers gasping for economic breath - and, often, the "winners" with a temporary if not downright pyrrhic "victory." (Consider Texas, whose "boom towns" of the '70s became the empty husks of the '80s; consider Korea, whose "economic miracle" of the '80s, built on the infusion of transnational capital in search of low-wage labor, is turning sour as corporations move on to the Philippines in search of even lower-wage labor.)

The corporate response to this undeniable reality has been to trumpet "emerging opportunities," "growth regions," and "market expansion." Implicit in all this staged euphoria is the notion that working stiffs, ordinary folks, everyday people, or whatever other folksy label we want to put on the 90% of us left out of the considerations of the powerful, are no different than the parts on a machine: replaceable, disposable, even interchangeable. And that the only way for us to survive in this bold new economic future is to be as mobile as capital - that is, to chase work around the country or the world as rapidly as money chases profit. We dare not attach ourselves to a place, a people, a community, or even a particular sort of work because we may have to abandon it on short notice for the sake of our own and our families’ survival, perpetually chasing behind - always, of course, behind - capital in what gives a new, more sinister meaning to "the rat race."

We have to drink the shallow economic water that runs on the surface of a local economy because if we dare to set down roots and try to drink from a deeper source, we may find the watershed pumped away to feed another, distant, plain, leaving the earth cracked, dry, and barren and ourselves (and the stable communities we hoped to find) to wither. We must, that is, become nomads - no, not even nomads, which implies purposeful ranging over well-known territory, but mere wanderers, emotionally isolated in order to be emotionally insulated against the constant risk and frequent reality of loss. We must be homeless, placeless, rootless.

If that sounds melodramatic it's because it describes not what's fully formed today but the end of a process that has been going for some time and will only be accelerated by NAFTA and GATT, which make the macroeconomics of transnational corporations and not the microeconomics of actual human beings not merely the central (that'd be nothing new) but increasingly the only economic standard of measure. On the other hand, if it sounds melancholic, that's because it is.

The melancholy was less in the sense of not having roots per se than in being unable to have roots - but still there was much more of a sense of importance of "place" than I'd had years before.

The truth is, I think what prompted all this was seeing such a variety of scenes and places in such a short time. (The route was Boston - Chicago - Los Angeles - Portland - Chicago - Boston or, put another way, industrial Northeast/Midwest, Central Plains, Southwest, Pacific Coast, Columbia River Basin, Northern Plains, and back.) In just about every one of them I could find something beautiful or intriguing or interesting or thought-provoking or something that could make that place one worth spending some time in. I could see what might attract people to the place. But I began to wonder if familiarity, if not breeding contempt, at least gives rise to indifference. The beauty of the Rockies, the ruggedness of the coast, the incredible sweeping openness of the plains, these are things that some people experience every day. Do they appreciate what they have? Or is there a point at which it becomes sameness? Do we, ultimately, only see value in the exotic?

I recall taking a cross-country bus trip some years ago. At a stop in Indianapolis, a little shop at the station had a poster in the window advertising its new fountain creation: a Coney Island. Now, growing up on the Jersey shore as I did, Coney Island was a place you never went because it was always noisy, overcrowded with tourists spilling beer and ice cream, and expensive. But, I realized, in Indianapolis it might have seemed an exciting, exotic place. Later, when we crossed the Mississippi, the driver announced the fact over that sort of crackling, hissy PA buses always seemed to have. Passengers were looking out their windows going "oooh!" And I was looking out my window going "oooh!" And a girl from East St. Louis was going "Yeah? So?" The situation was reversed: What to me was notable, to her was everyday, not even worth mentioning to the point where she was surprised anyone else would.

Which brings me to the wrapup of this meandering line of thinking, something that the trip drove home and clarified. I've been trying of late to take more notice of the things around me, the views and vistas that normally we let slip into the background because we're too busy, we're too distracted, they're too familiar, they're just town streets or a little hill, they're not grand or special or exotic. I've been trying, that is, to be more aware of place. Because I think, maybe it's a natural progression, maybe it's a matter of age, maybe it's always been there but is now emerging with force, but I think that I want to belong somewhere. I don't know where that is or even how to look for it, but what the hell, I'm here now so I may as well take a really good look around. After all, if I don't know where it is, it might just possibly be here.

And even if it turns out not to be, I may as well enjoy the scenery.