Our Lost Railways

 In 2013 the sole engineer on a crude oil train at the end of his allowable operating hours set the air brakes on his train and repaired to a hut for needful rest. While he was sleeping the idling engine overheated causing a fire which was extinguished by local firemen. Without notifying the owners or attempting to find the engineer they shut down the unit that was powering the compressed air for the brakes. When the brakes failed the train rolled downhill and jumping the tracks caught fire incinerating downtown Magantic. So who is responsible for this calamity? The engineer followed the rules in good faith and lacking a backup engineer had little choice. The train's owners have ceased to exist as a company.

As fuel oil becomes more expensive and profit margins tighter rail lines cut corners. Single-man crews become all to often the norm. Rail bed ballasts become unstable and aging railway ties rot, spikes rust, and wear and tear on rails and their joints take their toll. Rail line inspectors walk only so far from the nearest railway crossing. Derailments occur all to often. In many cases rural level railway crossings have only the most rudimentary warnings. You will remember that on its maiden trip the ill-fated Turbo cut a transport truck in two. A high-speed train from Montreal to Toronto could make the trip in just over an hour downtown to downtown, a trip that in today's environment takes 4 or 5 hours by air. But given present conditions this is only a dream.

It was in Mulroney's era that our rail system was decimated. No rail lines remain in PEI and little remain in NS. The narrow gauge Newfie Bullet exists as a museum in St. John's its line a part of the Trans Canada Trail. Although crude still travels to the Irving Refinery in Saint John transport trucks clog our highways creating wear and tear to replace the much more efficient rail transport.  

Everest

Aircraft pilots and passengers need pressurized air and oxygen above 10,000 ft. Base camp for Everest is at 17,000. Altitude sickness becomes an issue above 5,000 and can be fatal the only treatment a return to lower altitudes. It is only one of the possible bodily reactions to thinning air. Health and conditioning are no predictors of whether these complications will hit. Sound like a tourist destination?

Aside from the body's reaction to lowering air pressure is the issue of thinning air and drop in available oxygen. The Sherpa's who make a living packing for climbers have lived their entire lives for generations at high altitude and their bodies have adapted.

If you've traveled to mountainous regions such as Banff and Jasper in Canada then you're aware of the body's need to acclimatize. Among other things the blood sees an increase in hemoglobin. Until that happens any exertion can leave you panting, suffering profound fatigue, head ache, and stomach upset. Cooking at elevation is another issue. Water boils at a lower temperature and baked goods require less leavening plus fires are harder to start and keep burning.

Back to Everest. Because it's there seems a fool-hardy reason to enter a death zone. Above Camp four on Everest the air is so thin it cannot support helicopter flight and the bodies of those who go there are dying. Remaining too long will kill you and getting trapped by weather is an ever-present danger and will result in your death. No rescue is possible at that elevation and the bodies of the dead litter the mountain as no one has the energy to carry them away.

Finally cold is an ever-present menace the temperature rarely rising above 0º F and dropping to -30 with -60 wind chills. Plus with people from many nations gathering in polluted, pestilential third-world slum conditions diseases rapidly become epidemics. And yet people pay $100,000 or more to go there as tourists.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

Who is Trump making the world better for?

An American Senator is quoted as saying that he believed in climate change until he learned the cost of fighting it. But he ignores the cost of doing nothing. Already thousands are dying from the effects of pollution and heat, those who survive add to the cost of health care.

Floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, fires damage property and that increases insurance rates North America wide not to mention the personal costs. The same phenomena damage highways and other public infrastructure adding to our taxes. Droughts threaten the lives and livelihood of millions, rising sea levels threaten to change the world's geography engulfing all of Bangladesh, much of Florida and many islands in Oceaniana, some already ankle deep at high tide. The cost of fighing forest fires exclusive of the loss of personal property is staggering. The loss of a fire team only serves to emphasize the dangers.

Donald Trump is like an osterich burying his head in the sand. If he could send all those foreigners home who would build his highways, office and apartment towers, clean his home and maintain his pool, mow his grass, nanny his children. Is adequate health care really the preserve of those who can afford it ensuring they get prompt attention.

Corporate America cares only for the bottom line. If they keep sourcing cheaper products off-shore who is going to be left with a job to buy them. In Canada thousands of Sears workers are losing their jobs and even severance pay, those on the verge of retirement their pensions but at the same time executives are being offered bonuses to stay. Shades of the Mortgage Banking Debacle. Why does a CEO earn $500,000,000 while his store clerk scrapes by on $25,000 and probably works a second job to make ends meet.

Corporate Greed is destroying our world. What's the point of a tree if I can't cut it, a whale if I can't harpoon it, a wild creature if I can't hunt it, a nature reserve if I can't bulldoze it, mine it, drill for oil.

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

State of the Union

Poverty, malnutrition, ignorance, unemployment are the banes of our society. Anyone who feels they have to define their self-worth in terms of the people to whom they feel themselves superior has a fragile sense of being. Racism, xenophobia, bullying, sexual harassment, assault, are all manifestations of this lack of self-worth, a sense of meaningfulness. The ultimate expression of this nihilism and depression shows up in the mass suicides of young people on our Canadian Reserves.

That a young native female feels her situation so desperate that she resorts to becoming a sex trade worker is one thing, that someone should feel that this makes her less than human and therefore the object of rape and murder... ? What makes a person so insecure within himself that he feels he is threatened by another's alternate lifestyle. Be it sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion. And remember being homosexual is a matter of birth, not choice. Pregnant woman now appear regularly in public and later breast feed their infants publicly as well. Those with disfigurements no longer hide in closets and wheel-chair accessibility has become an issue as an increasing segment of our society choose to lead very active lives. The growing number of Vets in America have helped drive this issue. After all, we trained them to be agressive.

Visible minorities are obvious targets, the fact that African-Americans arrived as slaves makes them uniquely vulnerable. However something as simple as an accent or turn of phrase can define one as an outsider.

Alcoholism and Drug Dependency are another means of escape for many people. The use of marijuana has become so general that we are moving to legalize it. The use of recreational drugs prescription or otherwise among the general population has become epidemic. Concomitant with this rise is the crime that supports it. The youth offender act has led drug pushers to utilize children to peddle their wares. The easy money is tempting to the youthful unemployed. Learning that you have a meth lab next door when the house blows up.... That your tenant used your rental property for a grow op.... Or going for a hike in a National Park and discovering that meadow before you is a massive pot farm.... Unfortunately all these scenarios are very real.

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

Crime and Poverty

Poverty, malnutrition, ignorance, unemployment are the banes of our society. Anyone who feels they have to define their self-worth in terms of the people to whom they feel themselves superior has a fragile sense of being. Racism, xenophobia, bullying, sexual harassment, assault, are all manifestations of this lack of self-worth, a sense of meaningfulness. The ultimate expression of this nihilism and depression shows up in the mass suicides of young people on our Canadian Reserves.

That a young native female feels her situation so desperate that she resorts to becoming a sex trade worker is one thing, that someone should feel that this makes her less than human and therefore the object of rape and murder... ? What makes a person so insecure within himself that he feels he is threatened by another's alternate lifestyle. Be it sexual orientation, race, nationality, religion. And remember being homosexual is a matter of birth, not choice. Pregnant woman now appear regularly in public and later breast feed their infants publicly as well. Those with disfigurements no longer hide in closets and wheel-chair accessibility has become an issue as an increasing segment of our society choose to lead very active lives. The growing number of Vets in America have helped drive this issue. After all, we trained them to be agressive.

Visible minorities are obvious targets, the fact that African-Americans arrived as slaves makes them uniquely vulnerable. However something as simple as an accent or turn of phrase can define one as an outsider.

Alcoholism and Drug Dependency are another means of escape for many people. The use of marijuana has become so general that we are moving to legalize it. The use of recreational drugs prescription or otherwise among the general population has become epidemic. Concomitant with this rise is the crime that supports it. The youth offender act has led drug pushers to utilize children to peddle their wares. The easy money is tempting to the youthful unemployed. Learning that you have a meth lab next door when the house blows up.... That your tenant used your rental property for a grow op.... Or going for a hike in a National Park and discovering that meadow before you is a massive pot farm.... Unfortunately all these scenarios are very real.

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

Getting Into a Jam

Making gooseberry jam is not about the cost but a labour of love. From the time I left to pick up 3 L of berries, to stemming and blossom ending them, to cooking the berries with lemon juice and sugar to topping the final glass, 9½ hours. In the meantime I also made 2½ quarts of Gazpacho, and 2 L of lemonade. And watched Brokeback Mountain one more time. The lid on at least one of my jars has already noisily snapped--that's a good thing. Given its history Wyoming is one hell of place to be gay, Texas not much better. Ironic that in the movie Jake Gyllenhaal's character dies while in real life it was Heath Ledger who didn't survive Hollywood. Oh, 12 jars of Gooseberry Jam and the lids all snapped.

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

Chesapeake Bay Bridge

So being that it's in America it has to be the ----iest.  Typical of America is the shopping centre in the middle of the Bay. The Jets taking off from NAS Norfolk Roads directly over my head at KOA Virginia Beach....

Have you seen the Confederation Bridge? Driven the High Mountain Road, HWY 1, through the Rockies from BC to Alberta in spring with its avalanche sheds and no stopping avalanche warning signs. Red Mountain Pass, 1300 ft with 90 switchbacks, 15 mph caution signs and 5000 ft drop offs at the edge of the pavement--no shoulders and definitely no guard rails. The million dollar highway into Durango has one looking for a pullout to cool ones' brakes and driving in low gear at that. On a clear day Chesapeake Bay is a walk in the park.

When I drove into Ashcroft from the Blueridge Parkway losing 3000 ft in one mile I passed 5 suicide lanes. On the drive from Prince Albert to Flin Flon I passed through 3 hours of frozen fog. Have you driven at night on a prairie highway and waited for an hour until you finally met that car coming toward you? Driven in Northern Ontario where the nearest settlement is another 200 miles. Met a moose in the road at Plaster Rock Game Reserve  again, 250 miles of rocks, trees, lakes, and moose. And then there's reputedly America's most dangerous highway from Helper to Provo Utah, I drove it in February, the pass a balmy 9 above.

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

Armageddon

We have a sick joke in Canada about the Tim Horton's Cups on the moon.

If we could find them the tracks Franklin's men and sledges left in the high Arctic still exist. Chernobyl's radiation infects the reindeer lichen. In the Antarctic the bones of Amundsen's Dogs (which he ate and Perry's  gas fueled sledges (which he couldn't eat) litter the ice. The Amazon Jungle shrinks ignoring the fact that the Sahara was once a Rainforest. The bodies and oxygen bottles of adventurers litter the Himalayas. The wilderness has been beaten back until little remains of the Boreal Forest but the 200-ft tracks adjoining major highways. Four Billion and counting clutter the Indian subcontinent and China. The remotest ocean reaches are littered with millions of tonnes of our plastic waste. Cities such as Montreal and Vancouver use our waterways and oceans as a convenient sewer. And we wonder why our whales are dying. Forget global winter or melting icecaps, if the phytoplankton should collapse, we lose the engine that provides the majority of the world's oxygen. Pristine Wilderness no longer exists anywhere on earth.

The space surrounding our planet is littered with thousands of bits of space junk; from lost screw drivers and wrenches to defunk rockets, satellites, and boosters. Various landers and explorers litter the moon along with Mars and several other planets. Satellites have crashed into asteroids and comets. Two voyagers have even left the environs of our solar system. We may quarantine materials brought from space but we do space no similar favours.

Politicians such as Trump argue that the world's economies cannot support the fight to save our planet, meanwhile they spend trillions on Weapons of Mass Destruction and complain that others do not contribute their share. Be fruitful and inhabit the earth. It could be argued that mankind is a blight upon the earth that is rapidly working its own destruction.

The biome has and will rebalance itself after an asteroid impact; global sea rise; earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions; nuclear winter; tornadoes and hurricanes; global plagues; droughts, heat waves, global winter. The question is will our species survive the readjustment.

---

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

Further Rants for June

There shall be wars and rumours of war.

Listening to the news reveals a litany of man's inhumanity to man. The triumph of celebrity over justice in the Bill Cosby Trial or the election of a president. The treatment of a sexual assault victim in a court of law is nothing short of shameful and a definite deterrent to coming forward. The latest mass shooting becomes so common as to be ho-hum.

There are enough natural disasters and suffering to go around without man-made aggressions. Fires set by lightening, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and landslides. Saturday the Toronto Area was under a tornado watch and today a severe thunderstorm watch. June 18.

Talk of raising the minimum wage raises cries from business that they can't afford to pay. But wouldn't putting more spending power in the hands of low wage earners increase business? Landlords including government in the case of public housing resist spending funds on measures to improve the safety of high rises unless forced to by legislation enforced by inspections. A recent fire in England has dramatically brought the issue to the fore with an increasing death toll. The yearly opening of private pools is already being marked by deaths in those facilities. A coming long weekend will be marked by carnage on the highways.

Baby Boomers are dropping like flies, every week we seem to hear of yet another group of celebrities who have passed on, dying no longer seems to be a politically correct term. More troubling personally is the fact that more and more the people succumbing to one illness or another are younger than I.

"Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the rest." Winston Churchill. When did the common man ever have a proper grasp of what was in his best interest. First Britons voted to leave the European Union—Brexit; then they voted to emasculate the government that has to negotiate the process. Britain is either in or out, there is no cherry picking of aspects of union AND there is a price to be paid for leaving, there are huge costs involved. Oops!

Human migration and the aspirations of those migrants inundate small countries and neighbourhoods leading to resistance to change among the traditional residents of those localities. The threat of such change has even led European Nations to resist immigration and I'm all too familiar with the fear of the "Hispanic Menace" or the annoyance in South Florida at the Cuban invasion. I know my own frustration at the thought that the possibility of offending a visible minority means our schools and public spaces no longer celebrate Christmas. When one is stressed by illness or a sick child the desire to be comfortable speaking to a health care worker whose cultural and language background is one's own can be very strong. After all one is not in a foreign country where one needs an interpreter to get medical care. Expressing such desires may not be politically correct but that doesn't make them go away. The fact that a mother made such a request in nearby Mississauga has caused a social media and political frenzy.

Having had to use Oakville's Taxi system I learned that perspective drivers are allowed an interpreter when they take their taxi license test, but the customer is offered no such service. Would it be too much to ask that my driver speak one of Canada's official languages and know the town and its surrounding neighbourhood? Does this make me a racist? That my driver was a doctor or lawyer in his country of origin is quite another matter.

I realize that racist arguments can sound very reasonable, after all there are sections of the Bible that justify slavery. Opposing racism and xenophobia in theory is easy, it's quite another matter when your new neighbour starts cooking curry in the next apartment daily, starts hanging their laundry from tree branches or starts beating his wife.

Feeding babies on demand, that is, when they cry, teaches us to associate food with comfort and contributes to obesity in adults. After all we refer to comfort foods.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

June Rant 2017

Hate mongers such as Ernest Zundel, alas a Canadian, have long promoted the anti-Semitic agenda that states that the systematic liquidation of 6 million Jews under the Hitler Regime during WW#2 and at least 3 million gays, Roma, mentally challenged never happened. I suppose it shouldn't surprise us that gun lobbyists are now claiming that atrocities such as the Sandy Hook Massacre was created by actors as a ruse to encourage anti-gun legislation. Ironic then that a group of Republican NRA supporters were recently targeted by gun violence.

That the gun-man was in part protesting the Trump Presidency, a movement I could get behind, serves only to show that such violence begets only more violence and serves solely to damage the cause.

At the same time a group of protesters enacted a Handmaids Tale like silent sit-in at a hearing that would lead to legislation making planned parenthood, access to birth control, and abortion more difficult for women. Restricting reproductive care for women hardly seems motivated by Christian Love.

Misogyny in all its forms is alive and well in our society. I find it ironic that mothers, too many of them members of single-parent families are responsible for raising male chauvinist pigs.

In a world that is rapidly running out of resources to support its burgeoning population women who remain single, couples who choose to be childless, and birth control measures are receiving social and legislative support. In this context I fail to understand what fears motivate homophobia. What threats do gays pose? Sexual predation is an equal opportunity crime.

I may find points of disagreement with my Muslim Brothers but so long as they do not attempt to impose them on me or any other unwilling individuals they are welcome to practice their faith in my neighbourhood. Remember, it was Muslims who opposed the introduction of Sharia Law to Canada.

The cheap clothing you buy at Wal-Mart may well have been produced in a Sweat Shop in Bangladesh which employs women and children at starvation wages in appallingly unsafe conditions over long hours. Similar strategies motivate resistance to increased minimum wages, legislation governing safe working conditions, hours of work, work-breaks, over-time pay and unions that support such causes.... Even supposedly good Christians refuse to engage in the discussion as too politically controversial. Human rights have always been political.

Remind the Donald Trumps of this world that the greatness of any nation is defined by its treatment of the most vulnerable members of its society. Residents of an apartment that was home to those on social welfare for years complained about the dangerous conditions in their high-rise apartment home. Last night the building turned into a towering 22-storey inferno in London. Even in Toronto careless smokers tossing lit cigarette butts off balconies are responsible for a massive number of apartment fires. Smokers have a dreadful habit of treating the environment as their private ashtray. How often have you seen matches and butts fly from open windows of cars on the highway and how many of those and broken glass are responsible for grass and forest fires?

The theme in all of this is individual responsibility for collective welfare. No man is an island but part of the main. Love for the divine however it is you conceive of her/him, and love for fellow man is a central tenet of all great religions. It's time one nation under God remembered that.

Much has been made of the need for increased defense spending of late. How about redirecting those funds to universal health care, drug plans, guaranteed annual income, safe housing, clean water, education.... Reduce the war on drugs and crime and spend the funds on making people's lives safe, healthy, and meaningful. If you want to stimulate the economy put more funds in the hands of the poor, reducing taxes on the rich who already own more than they can find room for will only serve to increase the divide between wealth and poverty.

Do we need increased police budgets and even more invasive security measures, or should we work to improve the lives of those who are attracted to terrorist causes and lives of crime so that such measures are unnecessary. Got to love the rich kid who complains that his parent's taxes are going to go up to support the building of a community swimming pool when he already has one in his back yard.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

Insta Freebie

So I agreed to accept e-mails as a condition of downloading a free book. This does not give license to spam me multiple times a day. Once a week would be more than enough. Time better spent writing and editing. I don't need pictures of children or their pets: rabbits, dogs and kittens. Save then for Facebook. Nor do I need to know your medical problems to enjoy your books.

And unless your name is Leo Tolstoy or Victor Hugo a 700-page book is too long. 1700-pages...? I'm not a fan of profanity and if I want to learn about the mechanics of human coitus I'll re-read Desmond Morris.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

Drug Wars

I am aware that people use all manner of licit and illicit drugs as mood-altering agents. I know that many plants, fungi, and mushrooms have hallucinatory properties. That sniffing solvents such as those in glues, aerosols, gasoline and even Freon can cause artificial highs. I'm aware of alcohol and drug addiction and that many have become addicted to narcotics and opioids prescribed to relieve the pain of injury. Some of these chemicals such as crack and heroin are instantly addictive. Anyone who has tried to quit smoking knows the power of nicotine. The latest drug to get notice for it's potential for abuse is the active ingredient in the diarrhea medication Imodium. Taken at many times the recommended therapeutic dosage this narcotic produces a high but also depresses respiration and can even stop the heart. The use of marijuana has become so general that governments are moving to legalize it so they can tax it and monitor its use and distribution rather than criminalize routine users.

I have had to use anti-histamines for allergic sinusitis that cause mental and physical depression. For the same reason systemic decongestants that cause mild euphoria. But I have never understood the desire to ingest or inhale a mood altering substance simply to get high. I value being in control too much to become involved in recreational drug use. I don't find alcohol relaxing, rather it tends to make me tenser. Listening to music and the worship experience can produce spiritual ecstasy. Others find similar experiences in running or other exercise, (the pump or runner's high), or in meditation or tantric sex.

Our courts and prison systems are over-loaded with prosecuting those who profit from the demand for illicit drugs. Our capitalistic free-enterprise system shows that where there is a profit to be made from meeting a demand some entrepreneur will come forward to fill it. And drugs reap soaring profits. Just look at the poppy fields of Asia, the use of molasses to make rum, grains to make beer and whisky rather than flour.

No matter what border controls and drug enforcement measures are taken so long as the demand exists and the profits sky high means will be found to exploit the market. Having built fences to keep drugs out cartels use catapults to throw drugs over them.

The war on drugs and crime with increased police budgets may make it look like politicians are seeking to gain control but a check on medicine and liquor cabinets will show that the use of tranquilizers and alcohol to relieve stress is pretty general. If we are to win the war on drugs we have to address the difficult and challenging task of establishing what is driving the demand in the first place. Crowding more and more people into smaller spaces in our cities. Ever increasing background noise. Stressful work environments. Over stimulation by the information explosion of our modern media. Loneliness bred of isolation and anonymity.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

Cultural Appropriation

There has been a great deal of fuss in Canada lately about unfortunate comments made with regard to cultural appropriation. At issue here is a great deal of speculative fiction. Would this make Farley Mowat guilty in writing about arctic explorers and Inuit culture? Taken to its extreme would this mean that women should not write romance novels about men, cowboys for example? That would eliminate 75% of the genre. Do you need to be a member of the military to write about it? An ethnic minority to report on it? Would science fiction and fantasy even be possible?

Our museums are filed with pilfered cultural artifacts and even corpses. Indigenous peoples have suffered cultural and physical genocide. I understand that they are taking an opportunity for some push back but feel that the present emotional tirade is going too far. Certainly writers should be called to account for inaccuracies and miss-representation but to go further is to disavow most reportage and deny the possibility of human empathy.

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On the Road North in 2017

May the road rise before you
May the wind be ever at your back
May God hold you in the palm of his hand and
May you be half an hour in Heaven
Before the Devil knows you're Dead.

Those who know me realize that my cup is perennially half-empty but today a following wind was determined to blow me North. Great for gas mileage.

I got off as planned at 3:30 AM and save for the truckers one shares the road with at that hour the drive was uneventful. I passed through Fort Worth around 6:00 AM and exited the Great State of Texas in a brief shower around 8:00.

My luck with central Oklahoma holds. Having had a bad breakfast last time I stopped at Joe's Egg in Ardmore I decided to give Denny's a try. Filthy washroom that looked like someone had staged a brawl there. My banquet seat felt like an elephant had crushed it. Service was glacial relieved only by an opportunity to use Wi-Fi. My seat beside a service area treated me to a misogynist head waiter ragging his staff and the waitresses bitching behind his back. My food was tasteless.

When I stopped for gas the pump was the second slowest I've ever encountered, the previous low also in West Oklahoma took 20 minutes to pump 30 gallons of fuel. At least at $1.93 I saved 16¢/gallon on the going rate. Some smart aleck pulled in front of me as I was about to leave the stall. Oklahoma looked parched.

As I approached Kansas the heavens opened in a cloudburst that drummed on my windshield. One still hits the toll booth, now automated before reaching the Welcome Centre. Alas another poorly maintained washroom. The info I requested was largely out of stock. I detest toll roads, this one cost me $2.25 today.

The sun came out. I arrived in Lindsborg around 1:30, set up, and went to meet my hostess. The season here is about a month behind Austin. It was warm but cooled off considerably as the sun went down.