Seven swans a-swimming
Today is the seventh day of Christmas, the last of December and 2015, and my Massachusetts grandmother's birthday. She would be 121 years old were she still alive.
This December has sucked. I'll not be missing it.
The ground is covered by ice; working on an antenna tuning unit at a transmitter site in Connecticut last night, I almost slipped and fell down the hill several times. Oddly, there is actually water on the ground here in Dover, NH right now; I'm not here to work today, just passing through on the train.
I should have taken the train here Tuesday when I was here to work; there were accidents and spin-outs all over the highway.
It looks like Tuesday's storm brought about half a foot of snow to Dover. In Boston it was all ice. Given a choice, I'd take the snow, but of course we are never given a choice in such things.
I seem to have caught another cold. The stress I've been under these past few weeks has done me no favors. Now one of the Brazilians my client has hired wants to replace the automation system with something Brazilian which has no U.S. support and which no one in this country knows anything about. I said this is a really bad idea, and that the only way to do it would be to fly someone in from Brazil, pay him or her to do the work, and retain him or her as a consultant.
Now comes January, my second least favorite month of the year. And it's going to be 2016, the year of the rabid Republican. Someone really ought to take these people out and shoot them, or at least send them to the Aleutians.
There as a time when one could ride a train from Boston all the way to Nova Scotia. The 1948 Boston and Maine timetable lists trains on three different to Montreal, and one to Chicago via Fitchburg and Troy. Now much of that infrastructure is rusting away or overgrown by weeds.
The 1938 B&M timetable lists something truly strange: a train leaving Boston's North Station at 7:41 AM going to Waltham via the now abandoned Watertown branch. It stopped every half mile or so, reaching Waltham in about 40 minutes; then after ten minutes it followed the same route back to Boston. There was also service to Bedford via Lexington on what is now the Minuteman Bike Path, and service through Waltham, Wayland, and Sudbury out to Lancaster via a line long abandoned and overgrown.Our crumbling rail infrastructure is a metaphor for the decline of American power and prosperity, for it parallels the slow evaporation of factories and mills all over New England. The train I'm on now wouldn't be running if not for federal subsidies; and after Cruz or Rubio takes office a year from now, this line too may be consigned to the weeds.
This December has sucked. I'll not be missing it.
The ground is covered by ice; working on an antenna tuning unit at a transmitter site in Connecticut last night, I almost slipped and fell down the hill several times. Oddly, there is actually water on the ground here in Dover, NH right now; I'm not here to work today, just passing through on the train.
I should have taken the train here Tuesday when I was here to work; there were accidents and spin-outs all over the highway.
It looks like Tuesday's storm brought about half a foot of snow to Dover. In Boston it was all ice. Given a choice, I'd take the snow, but of course we are never given a choice in such things.
I seem to have caught another cold. The stress I've been under these past few weeks has done me no favors. Now one of the Brazilians my client has hired wants to replace the automation system with something Brazilian which has no U.S. support and which no one in this country knows anything about. I said this is a really bad idea, and that the only way to do it would be to fly someone in from Brazil, pay him or her to do the work, and retain him or her as a consultant.
Now comes January, my second least favorite month of the year. And it's going to be 2016, the year of the rabid Republican. Someone really ought to take these people out and shoot them, or at least send them to the Aleutians.
There as a time when one could ride a train from Boston all the way to Nova Scotia. The 1948 Boston and Maine timetable lists trains on three different to Montreal, and one to Chicago via Fitchburg and Troy. Now much of that infrastructure is rusting away or overgrown by weeds.
The 1938 B&M timetable lists something truly strange: a train leaving Boston's North Station at 7:41 AM going to Waltham via the now abandoned Watertown branch. It stopped every half mile or so, reaching Waltham in about 40 minutes; then after ten minutes it followed the same route back to Boston. There was also service to Bedford via Lexington on what is now the Minuteman Bike Path, and service through Waltham, Wayland, and Sudbury out to Lancaster via a line long abandoned and overgrown.Our crumbling rail infrastructure is a metaphor for the decline of American power and prosperity, for it parallels the slow evaporation of factories and mills all over New England. The train I'm on now wouldn't be running if not for federal subsidies; and after Cruz or Rubio takes office a year from now, this line too may be consigned to the weeds.