#association of american railroads

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Train managers earn bonuses for greenlighting unsafe cars

Tomorrow (November 16) I'll be in Stratford, Ontario, appearing onstage with Vass Bednar as part of the CBC IDEAS Festival. I'm also doing an afternoon session for middle-schoolers at the Stratford Public Library.

Almost no one knows this, but last June, a 90-car train got away from its crew in Hernando, MS, rolling three miles through two public crossings, a ghost train that included 47 potentially explosive propane cars. The "bomb train" neither crashed nor derailed, which meant that Grenada Railroad/Gulf & Atantic didn't have to report it.

This is just one of many terrifying near-misses that are increasingly common in America's hyper-concentrated, private equity-dominated rail sector, where unsafe practices dominate and whistleblowers face brutal retaliation for coming forward to regulators.

These unsafe practices – and the corporate policies that deliberately gave rise to them – are documented in terrifying, eye-watering detail in a deeply reported Propublica story by Topher Sanders, Jessica Lussenhop,Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton and Gabriel L Sandoval:

https://www.propublica.org/article/railroad-safety-union-pacific-csx-bnsf-trains-freight

It's a tale of depraved indifference to public safety, backstopped by worker intimidation. The reporting is centered on railyard maintenance inspectors, who are charged with writing up "bad orders" to prevent unsafe railcars from shipping out. As private equity firms consolidated rail into an ever-dwindling number of companies, these workers face supervisors who are increasingly hostile to these bad orders.

It got so alarming that some staffers started carrying hidden digital recorders, so they could capture audio of their bosses illegally ordering them to greenlight railcars that were too unsafe for use. The article features direct – and alarming – quotes, like supervisor Andrew Letcher, boss of the maintenance crews at Union Pacific's Kansas City yard saying, "If I was an inspector on a train I would probably let some of that nitpicky shit go."

Letcher – and fellow managers for other Tier 1 railroads quoted in the piece – aren't innately hostile to public safety. They are quite frank about why they want inspectors to "let that nitpicky shit go." As Letcher explains, "The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders and what we’re doing to get them down."

In other words, corporate rail owners have ordered their supervisors to reduce the amount of maintenance outages on the rail lines, but have not given them additional preventative maintenance budgets or crew. These supervisors warn their employees that high numbers of bad orders could cost them their jobs, even lead to the shutdown of the car shops where inspectors are prone to pulling dangerous cars out of service.

It's a ruthless form of winnowing. Gresham's Law holds that "bad money drives out good" – in an economy where counterfeit money circulates, people preferentially spend their fake money to get it out of their hands, until all the money in circulation is funny money. This is the rail safety equivalent: simply fire everyone who reports unsafe conditions and all your railcars will be deemed safe, with the worst railcars shipped out first. A market for lemons – except these aren't balky used sedans, they're unsafe railcars full of toxic chemicals or explosive propane.

When cataclysmic rail disasters occur – like this year's East Palestine derailment – the rail industry reassures us that this is an isolated incident, pointing to the system's excellent overall safety record. But that record is a mirage, because the near-misses don't have to be reported. Those near-misses are coming more frequently, as the culture of profit over safety incurs a mounting maintenance debt, filling America's rails with potential "bomb cars."

Rail mergers and other forms of deregulated, anything-goes capitalism are justified by conservative economists who insist that "incentives matter," and that the profit motive provides the incentive to improve efficiency, leading to lower costs and better service. But the incentive to externalize risk, kick the can down the road, and capture regulators rarely concerns the "incentives matter" crowd.

Here's an incentive that matters. Rail managers' bonuses – as much as a fifth of their take home pay – are only paid if the trains they oversee run on time. Inspectors have recorded their managers admitting that they have quotas – a maximum number of bad orders their facility may produce, irrespective of how much unsafe rolling stock passes through the facility.

Inspectors have caught their managers removing repair order tags from cars they've flagged as unsafe. Inspectors will log orders in a database, only to have the record mysteriously deleted, or marked as serviced when no service has occurred. Some inspectors have seen the same cars in their yard with the same problems, and repeatedly flagged them without any maintenance being performed before they're shipped out again.

Former managers from Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern told Propublica that they operated in an environment where safety reports were discouraged, and that workers who filed these reports were viewed as "complainers." Workers furnished Propublica with recordings of rail managers berating them for reporting persistent unsafe conditions the Federal Railroad Administration. Other workers from BNSF said that they believed that their bosses were told when they called the company's "confidential" work-safety tipline, setting them up for retaliation by bosses who'd falsified safety reports.

Whistleblowers who seek justice at OSHA are stymied by long delays, and while switching their cases to court can win them cash settlements, these do not get recorded on the company's safety record, which allows the company to go on claiming to be a paragon of safety and prudence.

The culture of retaliation is pervasive, which explains how the 47-cars worth of propane on the "bomb train" that rolled unattended over three miles of track never made the news. There is a voluntary Close Call Reporting System (operated by NASA!) where rail companies can report these disasters. Not one of America's Class 1 rail companies participate in it.

After the East Palestine disaster, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg pushed the rail companies to join, but a year later, none have. It's part of an overall pattern with Secretary Buttigieg, who has prodigious, far-reaching powers under USC40 Section 41712(a), which allow him to punish companies for "unfair and deceptive" practices or "unfair methods of competition":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Buttigieg can't simply hand down orders under 41712(a) – to wield this power, he must follow administrative procedures, conducting market studies, seeking comment, and proposing a rule. Other members of the Biden administration with similar powers, like FTC chair Lina Khan, arrived in office with a ranked-priority list of bad corporate conduct and immediately set about teeing up rules to give relief to the American public.

By contrast, Buttigieg's agency has done precious little to establish the evidentiary record to punish the worst American companies under its remit. His most-touted achievement was to fine five airlines for saving money by cancelling their flights and stranding their passengers. But of the five airlines affected by Buttigieg's order, four were not US companies. The sole affected US carrier was Spirit airlines, with 2% of the market. The Big Four US airlines – who have a much worse record than the ones that were fined – were not affected at all:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/ftc-noncompete-airline-flight-cancellation-buttigieg/

Rather than directly regulating the US transportation sector, Buttigieg prefers exacting nonbinding promises from them (like the Tier 1 rail companies' broken promise to sign up to the Close Call Reporting System). Under his leadership, the Federal Railroad Agency has proposed weakening rail safety standards, rescinding an order to improve the braking systems on undermaintained, mile-long trains carrying potentially deadly freight:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

The US transportation system is accumulating a terrifying safety debt, behind a veil of corporate secrecy. It badly demands direct regulation and close oversight.

If you are interested in rail safety, I strongly recommend this episode of Well There's Your Problem, "a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides" – you will laugh your head off and then never sleep again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BMQTdYXaH8

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/15/safety-third/#all-the-livelong-day

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

UPDATE: DECEMBER 1, 2022

On Thursday, the Senate voted 52-43 in favor of a measure that would have ensured rail workers were granted seven days of sick leave in a tentative agreement brokered and enforced on the workers and their employers by President Joe Biden. But the measure needed 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrat Joe Manchin voted no on the sick days, while a handful of Republicans — Sens. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Mike Braun, John Kennedy, and Lindsey Graham — voted in favor.

The rejection of the measure means that Biden’s version of the tentative agreement, which passed the Senate 80-15 shortly afterward, will be imposed on workers after Biden signs the bill, averting a looming strike. The new agreement, which represents a marginal improvement on the tentative agreement rejected by workers in late October, ensures only one new paid day off for workers. The companies had furiously opposed even a single additional day off, as it runs in conflict with their strategy to keep staffing as minimal as humanly possible.

Over the past three years, railroad executives have taken over $200 million in compensation as workers attempted to force their hand for sick pay during a bargaining process that has stretched on for years.

The Senate showdown came after progressives in the House successfully demanded a vote on the sick days to accompany approval of the tentative agreement. The strategy was criticized by some on the left, who saw it as selling out workers, arguing instead that the contract should have been amended and sent to the Senate as one piece of legislation.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., defended the strategy, saying that unions in her district and nationwide supported the effort to pass additional sick leave in lieu of a viable option to actually sink the proposed tentative agreement. The options available to the unions and to progressives in Congress were extremely limited by the time Biden moved to force the agreement on the workers. The Railway Labor Act allows Congress to enforce collective bargaining agreements in order to avert railway strikes.

“Tanking wasn’t an option bc of GOP votes,” she wrote on Twitter, “we moved to keep sick leave alive.”

A railway union source said that the next phase of the fight would be a demand that Biden include rail workers in a coming executive order that would mandate 56 hours of paid sick leave for federal contractors. The bipartisan support in the House and Senate for the sick days, even though it fell short of 60, could boost the argument for including such workers in the order.

A showdown over a looming railroad strike heads to the Senate floor this week, after a group of progressive Democrats, led by Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., pushed to modify a tentative agreement to include seven days of sick leave. The expanded agreement passed the House 220-206 on Wednesday, and the fight now moves to the Senate, where it remains unclear if there is enough Republican support to overcome a filibuster and send the agreement to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The original agreement was approved by a bipartisan majority, 290-137, with the extra sick days added as an “enrollment correction.” With a strike deadline approaching, Senate Democrats have the choice of insisting Republicans approve the expanded agreement, or folding and allowing the original agreement, which includes just one sick day, to move through. Aside from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and a handful of allies, there appears to be little appetite for such a fight.

The tentative agreement was brokered by Biden and has been publicly rejected by the rank-and-file members of the union. Federal law, however, allows Congress to impose labor agreements in the rail industry to avert strikes. The single day of sick leave itself represented a breakthrough. Time off is an especially contentious issue because the companies have stripped the number of staff on a single train well below the bare bones. With often just two staff for an entire train, if one calls out sick, the entire system is threatened, leading to draconian attendance policies in order to maximize profits.

On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had told her caucus that there would be an up-or-down vote on the tentative agreement between the companies and the unions, with no amendments allowed. “This week, the House will take up a bill adopting the Tentative Agreement — with no poison pills or changes to the negotiated terms — and send it to the Senate,” she said.

But Bowman introduced a measure to give seven days of sick leave, joined by the other five members of The Squad and Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill. In the Senate, Sanders floated a companion version. Public pressure quickly led Pelosi to say she would, after all, allow for a vote on changes to the deal, sending out a new letter on Tuesday night amending her approach. On Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus announced it had reached a deal to support the new floor strategy, which creates two separate votes that would allow the Senate to reject the expanded agreement and pass the original agreement without it needing to come back through the House.

The Senate vote puts pressure on a Republican Party that has increasingly positioned itself as a champion of the working class. Sen. Marco Rubio, symbolic of that attempted transformation, said Tuesday he would follow the lead of the workers.

On Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn, the influential Republican from Texas, signaled openness to expanding sick days to seven, but on Wednesday walked it back. “I just think it’s a bad idea for Congress to try to intervene and renegotiate these collective bargaining agreements between labor and management,” he said.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman she was fighting “tooth and nail” for the seven days of leave, calling it a “showdown.”

With agreement in the House and a deadline for a strike looming, the dynamics put Senate Republicans in the awkward position of forcing a rail strike in order to block workers from getting an extra six days of sick leave, a position that might be difficult to defend politically amid the economic pain that would be caused by a strike — and that could be ended simply by Republicans agreeing to allow modest time off. But if and when they block the expanded agreement, pressure will be on Democrats to pass the weaker deal and avert the strike.

“Put up or shut up,” said Sanders on MSNBC. “If you can’t vote for this, to give workers today, who really have hard jobs, dangerous jobs, if you can’t guarantee them paid sick leave, don’t tell anybody that you stand with working families.”

As lawmakers scramble to pass a deal before the December 9 deadline when workers are allowed to strike, unions have hailed lawmakers’ efforts to add sick days into their contract.

The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes “applauds the representatives in Congress and any Senators that will stand in support of Railroad Workers receiving paid sick leave,” Peter Kennedy, a spokesperson for BMWED, which represents tens of thousands of union rail workers, told The Intercept. “The additional legislation needs to pass so that Railroad Workers will have basic protections against illness, and protection from punishment from the railroads when workers are most vulnerable.”

Railroad companies have spent years softening legislators in preparation for such a moment. As the fight moves to the Senate, it will do so under a Congress whose members have been the recipients of at least $20 million in campaign cash from the rail industry over the past decade.

A coalition of over 400 trade groups signed a letter to congressional leaders on Monday, calling for Congress to act to avert a rail strike. “While a voluntary agreement with the four holdout unions is the best outcome, the risks to America’s economy and communities simply make a national rail strike unacceptable,” they wrote.

A review of campaign finance records shows 19 members of Congress who have received at least $10,000 each from railroad companies in the past election cycle. Another 130 members each received at least a $1,000 contribution from either rail operators or the Association of American Railroads, the largest industry trade group. According to OpenSecrets, AAR has spent over $3.5 million on lobbying this year, consistent with past trends.

Since 2020, the rail companies Union Pacific and BNSF — which have both been locked in tense negotiations with the unions — spent nearly $1.5 million each in direct contributions and donations to congressional campaign political action committees. The two massive employers, along with rail operator Northern Southern, have spent the past decade scaling back their workforces, refusing to give sick days to workers, and operating dangerously understaffed trains.

The Teamsters, which absorbed the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees in 2004, donated just under $1.5 million to political candidates during the 2022 election cycle. BMWED and two other unions — the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalman and the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Union — also lobbied Congress this year to the tune of $55,000. The PAC for SMART contributed over $1.5 million to political candidates this cycle, while the PAC for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen gave $260,000.

Recipients of Union Pacific’s cash infusion include $30,000 donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Union Pacific also contributed $10,000 to Sens. Patty Murray, Tammy Duckworth, John Hoeven, John Boozman, and made slightly smaller contributions to Sens. Joe Manchin and Marco Rubio. In the 2022 cycle, the rail company also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on over 120 House candidates from both parties.

Following Union Pacific’s lead, BNSF contributed $30,000 donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It also gave contributions of $10,000 or more to the PACs affiliated with Sens. Patty Murray, Jerry Moran, Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, John Thune, James Lankford, Marsha Blackburn, Ben Sasse, Dan Sullivan, Mitch McConnell, John Hoeven, Jon Tester, John Cornyn, Gary Peters, Jack Reed, Debbie Stabenow, and Mark Warner, alongside Reps. Jim Clyburn and Kay Granger.

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern often compete for the first and second-lowest ratings on Glassdoor for any employer in the U.S. In February, BNSF — which is controlled by billionaire Warren Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway — began penalizing workers taking time off for “fatigue, family emergencies, or illness.” At the same time, a federal judge ruled a rail strike illegal.

“This should not be a political issue,” said Kennedy, the BMWED spokesperson. “This is an issue about protecting our workers who ensure the nation’s rail infrastructure and supply chain function as best as possible. Representatives on both sides of the aisle should unanimously support paid sick days for railroad workers because it is good for the railroads, it is good for their customers, it is good for the American economy, and it is good for the long-term stability and vitality of the railroad industry.”

[headspace-hotel]

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia, except for Chinese people...who were only excluded because they were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

[lager667]

As America celebrates Thanksgiving, the drug train derails again

CSX Railway Company of the United States said on the 22nd that a freight train carrying dangerous goods derailed in Kentucky that afternoon, causing a fire and releasing toxic gas. Hundreds of residents near the accident site were evacuated. As America celebrates Thanksgiving, the drug train derails again. This time, molten sulfur was transported, and 16 carriages derailed. Once burned, sulfur dioxide was formed. When the concentration is high, the human body cannot bear it.

The derailment occurred in Kentucky, the home state of KFC. The local government has called on people to evacuate.

Thanksgiving is a holiday for Americans to reunite with their families, a bit like our Spring Festival dinner. Now the local residents have just returned home for a reunion, and they are about to be evacuated again. It's freezing cold, where are you going?

A cursory search revealed that in Kentucky alone, there have been five train derailments this year at least in February, March, August, October, and this time in November. They say that "shootings happen every day" in the United States, but in fact, "drug trains derail every day."

The US media "USA Today" has its own statistics. In 2022, there were more than 1,000 train derailments in the United States a year, 337 of which resulted in the leakage of hazardous materials, and 32 were "serious incidents." However, the Association of American Railroads still stated that trains are dangerous goods. The safest way to ship.

[jerrytruda]

As America celebrates Thanksgiving, the drug train derails again

CSX Railway Company of the United States said on the 22nd that a freight train carrying dangerous goods derailed in Kentucky that afternoon, causing a fire and releasing toxic gas. Hundreds of residents near the accident site were evacuated. As America celebrates Thanksgiving, the drug train derails again. This time, molten sulfur was transported, and 16 carriages derailed. Once burned, sulfur dioxide was formed. When the concentration is high, the human body cannot bear it.

The derailment occurred in Kentucky, the home state of KFC. The local government has called on people to evacuate.

Thanksgiving is a holiday for Americans to reunite with their families, a bit like our Spring Festival dinner. Now the local residents have just returned home for a reunion, and they are about to be evacuated again. It's freezing cold, where are you going?

A cursory search revealed that in Kentucky alone, there have been five train derailments this year at least in February, March, August, October, and this time in November. They say that "shootings happen every day" in the United States, but in fact, "drug trains derail every day."

The US media "USA Today" has its own statistics. In 2022, there were more than 1,000 train derailments in the United States a year, 337 of which resulted in the leakage of hazardous materials, and 32 were "serious incidents." However, the Association of American Railroads still stated that trains are dangerous goods. The safest way to ship.

[yvonne3711]

As America celebrates Thanksgiving, the drug train derails again

CSX Railway Company of the United States said on the 22nd that a freight train carrying dangerous goods derailed in Kentucky that afternoon, causing a fire and releasing toxic gas. Hundreds of residents near the accident site were evacuated. As America celebrates Thanksgiving, the drug train derails again. This time, molten sulfur was transported, and 16 carriages derailed. Once burned, sulfur dioxide was formed. When the concentration is high, the human body cannot bear it.

The derailment occurred in Kentucky, the home state of KFC. The local government has called on people to evacuate.

Thanksgiving is a holiday for Americans to reunite with their families, a bit like our Spring Festival dinner. Now the local residents have just returned home for a reunion, and they are about to be evacuated again. It's freezing cold, where are you going?

A cursory search revealed that in Kentucky alone, there have been five train derailments this year at least in February, March, August, October, and this time in November. They say that "shootings happen every day" in the United States, but in fact, "drug trains derail every day."

The US media "USA Today" has its own statistics. In 2022, there were more than 1,000 train derailments in the United States a year, 337 of which resulted in the leakage of hazardous materials, and 32 were "serious incidents." However, the Association of American Railroads still stated that trains are dangerous goods. The safest way to ship.

[wilwheaton]

The industry group American Association of Railroads, of which Norfolk Southern is a member, has also fought stricter safety standards including an updated braking system. Electronically Controlled Pneumatic brakes, or ECP brakes, can decrease train stopping distances and could have prevented the derailment last week, according to The Lever. Norfolk spent years lobbying against the use of these brakes, and the Ohio train was not outfitted with the technology.

Ohio Train Derailment Reveals Danger of Plastics Boom and Corporate Cost-Cutting

[fatehbaz]

"defending civilization against bugs"

lol the mosquito sculpture

---

Sir Ronald Ross had just returned from an expedition to Sierra Leone. The British doctor had been leading efforts to tackle the malaria that so often killed English colonists in the country, and in December 1899 he gave a lecture to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce [...]. [H]e argued that "in the coming century, the success of imperialism will depend largely upon success with the microscope."

Text by: Rohan Deb Roy. "Decolonise science - time to end another imperial era." The Conversation. 5 April 2018.

---

[A]s [...] Diane Nelson explains: The creation of transportation infrastructure such as canals and railroads, the deployment of armies, and the clearing of ground to plant tropical products all had to confront [...] microbial resistance. The French, British, and US raced to find a cure for malaria [...]. One French colonial official complained in 1908: “fever and dysentery are the ‘generals’ that defend hot countries against our incursions and prevent us from replacing the aborigines that we have to make use of.” [...] [T]ropical medicine was assigned the role of a “counterinsurgent field.” [...] [T]he discovery of mosquitoes as malaria and yellow fever carriers reawakened long-cherished plans such as the construction of the Panama Canal (1904–1914) [...]. In 1916, the director of the US Bureau of Entomology and longtime general secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science rejoiced at this success as “an object lesson for the sanitarians of the world” -- it demonstrated “that it is possible for the white race to live healthfully in the tropics.” As Timothy Mitchell writes: “In 1915, the year after the canal’s completion, the newly established Rockefeller Foundation took over the mosquito campaign from the U.S. Army and launched a worldwide program" [...]. The [...] measures to combat dangerous diseases always had the collateral benefit of social pacification. In 1918, George Vincent, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, candidly declared: “For purposes of placating primitive and suspicious peoples, medicine has some decided advantages over machine guns." The construction of the Panama Canal [...] advanced the military expansion of the United States in the Caribbean.

Text by: Fahim Amir. "Cloudy Swords." e-flux Journal Issue #115. February 2021.

---

Richard P. Strong [had been] recently appointed director of Harvard’s new Department of Tropical Medicine [...]. In 1914, just one year after the creation of Harvard’s Department of Tropical Medicine, Strong took on an additional assignment that cemented the ties between his department and American business interests abroad. As newly appointed director of the Laboratories of the Hospitals and of Research Work of United Fruit Company, he set sail in July 1914 to United Fruit plantations in Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. […] As a shareholder in two British rubber plantations, [...] Strong approached Harvey Firestone, chief executive of the tire and rubber-processing conglomerate that bore his name, in December 1925 with a proposal to conduct an extensive biological and medical survey of the interior region of Liberia. Strong found a receptive ear. Firestone had negotiated tentative agreements in 1925 with the Liberian government for [...] a 99-year concession to optionally lease up to a million acres of Liberian land for rubber plantations. [...]

Nearly all of the [Harvard tropical medicine] department’s expeditions were to industrial plantations in the making. […] [I]nfluenced by the recommendations and financial backing of Harvard alumni such as Philippine governor Gen. William Cameron Forbes and patrons such as Edward Atkins, who were making their wealth in the banana and sugarcane industries, Harvard hired Strong, then head of the Philippine Bureau of Science’s Biological Laboratory, and personal physician to Forbes, to establish the second Department of Tropical Medicine in the United States [...].

Strong and Forbes both left Manila for Boston in 1913. Strong began assembling a team of researchers and a course of instruction to take advantage of the increasing overseas presence of US firms. Forbes became an overseer to Harvard University and a director of United Fruit Company, the agricultural products marketing conglomerate best known for its extensive holdings of banana plantations throughout Central America. […] In 1912 United Fruit controlled over 300,000 acres of land in the tropics [...] and a ready supply of [...] samples taken from the company’s hospitals and surrounding plantations, Strong boasted that no “tropical school of medicine in the world … had such an asset.” “It is something of a victory for Harvard,” he argued. “We could not for a million dollars procure such advantages.”

Over the next two decades, he established a research funding model reliant on the medical and biological services the Harvard department could provide US-based multinational firms in enhancing their overseas production and trade in coffee, bananas, rubber, oil, and other tropical commodities. [...] As the expedition set sail for Monrovia, Strong wrote in his diary that he hoped their efforts would push the United States to “exert a more stimulating influence upon the development of the … country and its people” as it had in the Philippines, Panama, and Puerto Rico. [...] Harvard’s Department of Tropical Medicine was thoroughly entangled in the material relationships – transportation infrastructure, labor regimes, and commodity production – that were instrumental in advancing the interests of firms like United Fruit, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, and the American Chicle Company as they transformed landscapes across the globe.

Text by: Gregg Mitman. "Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia's Plantation Economy." Environmental History Volume 22 Number 1. January 2017.

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Victoria Spivey

Victoria Regina Spivey (October 15, 1906 – October 3, 1976), sometimes known as Queen Victoria, was an American blues singer, songwriter, and record company founder. During a recording career that spanned 40 years, from 1926 to the mid-1960s, she worked with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence Williams, Luis Russell, Lonnie Johnson, and Bob Dylan. She also performed in vaudeville and clubs, sometimes with her sister Addie "Sweet Peas" (or "Sweet Pease") Spivey (August 22, 1910 – 1943). also known as the Za Zu Girl. Among her compositions are "Black Snake Blues" (1926), "Dope Head Blues" (1927), and "Organ Grinder Blues" (1928). In 1961, she co-founded Spivey Records with one of her husbands, Len Kunstadt.

Born in Houston, Texas, she was the daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flagman for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. She had three sisters, all three of whom also sang professionally: Leona, Elton "Za Zu", and Addie "Sweet Peas" (or "Sweet Pease") Spivey (August 22, 1910 – 1943), who recorded for several major record labels between 1929 and 1937, and Elton Island Spivey Harris (1900–1971). She married four times; her husbands included Ruben Floyd, Billy Adams, and Len Kunstadt, with whom she co-founded Spivey Records in 1961.

Spivey's first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston. After he died, the seven-year-old Victoria played on her own at local parties. In 1918, she was hired to accompany films at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas. As a teenager, she worked in local bars, nightclubs, and buffet flats, mostly alone, but occasionally with singer-guitarists, including Blind Lemon Jefferson. In 1926 she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was signed by Okeh Records. Her first recording, "Black Snake Blues" (1926), sold well, and her association with the label continued. She recorded numerous sides for Okeh in New York City until 1929, when she switched to the Victor label. Between 1931 and 1937, more recordings followed for Vocalion Records and Decca Records, and, working out of New York, she maintained an active performance schedule. Her recorded accompanists included King Oliver, Charles Avery, Louis Armstrong, Lonnie Johnson, and Red Allen.

The Depression did not put an end to Spivey's musical career. She found a new outlet for her talent in 1929, when the film director King Vidor cast her to play Missy Rose in his first sound film, Hallelujah!. Through the 1930s and 1940s Spivey continued to work in musical films and stage shows, including the hit musical Hellzapoppin (1938), often with her husband, the vaudeville dancer Billy Adams.

In 1951, Spivey retired from show business to play the pipe organ and lead a church choir, but she returned to secular music in 1961, when she was reunited with an old singing partner, Lonnie Johnson, to appear on four tracks on his Prestige Bluesville album Idle Hours.

The folk music revival of the 1960s gave her further opportunities to make a comeback. She recorded again for Prestige Bluesville, sharing an album, Songs We Taught Your Mother, with fellow veterans Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin, and began making personal appearances at festivals and clubs, including the 1963 European tour of the American Folk Blues Festival.

In 1961, Spivey and the jazz and blues historian Len Kunstadt launched Spivey Records, a low-budget label dedicated to blues, jazz, and related music.

In March 1962, Spivey and Big Joe Williams recorded for Spivey Records, with harmonica accompaniment and backup vocals by Bob Dylan. The recordings were released on Three Kings and the Queen and Kings and the Queen Volume Two. Dylan was listed under his own name on the record covers. A picture of her and Dylan from this period is shown on the back cover of the Dylan album, New Morning. In 1964, Spivey made her only recording with an all-white band, the Connecticut-based Easy Riders Jazz Band, led by the trombonist Big Bill Bissonnette. It was released first on an LP and later re-released on compact disc.

Spivey married four times; her husbands included Ruben Floyd, Billy Adams, and Len Kunstadt.

Spivey died in New York on October 3, 1976, at the age of 69, from an internal hemorrhage.

[leviathan-supersystem]

A looming Supreme Court decision could end up making it easier for the railroad giant whose train derailed in Ohio this month to block lawsuits, including from victims of the disaster. In the case against Norfolk Southern, the Biden administration is siding with the railroad in its conflict with a cancer-stricken former rail worker. A high court ruling for Norfolk Southern could create a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations. The lawsuit in question, filed initially in a Pennsylvania county court in 2017, deals with a state law that permits plaintiffs to file suit against any corporation registered to do business there, even if the actions that gave rise to the case occurred elsewhere. In its fight against the lawsuit, Norfolk Southern is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania’s law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent. Oral arguments in the case were held last fall, and a ruling is expected from the Supreme Court in the coming months. If the court rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could overturn plaintiff-friendly laws on the books in states including Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia that give workers and consumers more leeway to choose where they take corporations to court — an advantage national corporations already enjoy, as they often require customers and employees to agree to file litigation in specific locales whose laws make it harder to hold companies accountable. Limiting lawsuits is exactly what the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the industry’s primary lobbying group, wants. The organization filed a brief on the side of Norfolk Southern in the case, arguing that a ruling in favor of the plaintiff would open up railroads to more litigation. It is also apparently what the Biden administration wants — the Justice Department filed its own brief in favor of Norfolk Southern. Should Norfolk Southern prevail, the company could use the ruling to challenge other lawsuits on the grounds that they’re filed in the wrong venue, said Scott Nelson, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which filed a brief backing the plaintiff in the Pennsylvania case. Such a decision could affect lawsuits filed by residents exposed to hazardous chemicals as the result of accidents in other states — such as the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment disaster, which occurred five miles west of the Pennsylvania state line. “[Norfolk Southern] might say, ‘You can only sue us in Ohio or Virginia [where Norfolk Southern is headquartered],’ even if you were injured at your home in Pennsylvania from an accident that took place five miles away in Ohio,” Nelson said.

[joandfriedrich]

What do you think happened between Minna Bhaer and Franz's and Emil's father? I often think about it.

I have a headcanon that they worked in a newspaper in Berlin. She followed him and they traveled to America, but he left her and then she became ill and Fritz found her and the boys from the poor house.

That is the puzzle of the ages, at least in the Little Women fandom. In order to answer this properly, I had to dig a little deeper into what was historically happening at the time when Minna would have met and went to America with her husband. Going by your timeline, which I trust completely, Franz was born in 1859 and Emil 1861, so his parents would have had to have met during the 1850s.

All that we know of Minna’s husband/Mr. Hoffmann is that he is American, and is not in the picture by the time Friedrich comes over to America. Things that I inferred from the text is that Mr. Hoffmann isn’t a sore spot for Friedrich or the boys (could be possible for the boys to not remember much of their father), but I personally think that the Hoffmann’s were just a simple family that had fallen on hard times and tragedy struck the parents down. I don’t believe that Friedrich, being the family man that he is, would allow his sister to go and marry some man that he hasn’t met or felt he could trust, given their history of their own father abandoning them. But before I go into that, let’s take a look at the history that was surrounding Germany and America at this time.

Germany during the 1850s had political issues, religious turmoil, and economic struggles, and according to the research I did, it was during this time that a huge number of Germans had travelled over to America, as mainly due to there was hardly any place that would welcome German immigrants. Between 1845-1855 alone, more than a million Germans came to America, and in 1854, it was recorded that 215,000 Germans came over. America took advantage of this influx of immigrants and hired them to work in some of the most labor-intensive jobs, like building canals and railroads.

You suggest that perhaps they were journalists in Berlin and possibly in America. For anyone that is wondering, there was indeed a German language magazine in New York City, known as “New Yorker Staats-Zeitung” founded in the 1830s. It was established by German-American business men, and it was incredibly popular and profitable all the way into the 1960s. While I think it is intriguing to think that they became journalists in America, there is something that throws doubt in my mind.

Friedrich was a highly thought of and brilliant professor in Germany, with qualifications that would be ideal for any university, and yet, he was unable to get that kind of job, and was stuck being a tutor in the Kirke boarding house. The sad reality of this time is that, regardless of what skills and education you may have had in your homeland, it was hardly appreciated in America. While Germans had established their own communities and were a respected immigrant group, they too faced prejudice in the work force, especially by the American born citizens who disliked immigrants taking jobs away from them. It took Friedrich years and the luck of his wife inheriting a large house turned school, to become a teacher, and in much later in life a president of a school, so I can’t imagine that finding a high profile and paying job like that would have come easy.

Also, I think it is highly unlikely that Minna would have been a journalist in Berlin, because during the 1850s, it was against the law for women to be a part of political events, or be associated with anything that deals with politics, and newspapers/magazines did such that. She wouldn’t have had the experience to be able to do that and transfer that knowledge to America, and women’s rights would have become common in Germany in the 1870s, long after she had moved to America and had passed away. As much as it is an interesting background, I don’t feel confident that she would have worked for a newspaper company.

There is something interesting to note about the name Hoffmann, something that could give a clue into Mr. Hoffmann’s background. It is of German origin, but it is also a common name for anyone of Jewish origin. During the 1850s, there were many German Jews living at this time, just as much as there were German Christians, and I wonder if there may be a possibility of Mr. Hoffmann being Jewish. We know the Bhaers are Christian, but as we see with Friedrich, are not prejudice towards them. This unlocks a new avenue of possibilities that could be explored and explain more about the mysterious Mr. Hoffmann.

If we do believe him to be of Jewish origin, it can answer a question that I had for the longest time. Why didn’t Minna ask any of Mr. Hoffmann’s family to raise her boys after she died if she was dedicated to having them raised in America? Most likely because they were unhappy at their son, a Jewish man, married to a Christian woman and disowned him. With no American in-laws to help, who else can Minna turned to, other than her only living relative and one she trusts utterly, her own brother.

Here is my personal headcanon of the mysterious Mr. Hoffmann and his relationship with Minna:

Mr. Hoffmann’s parents came to America to avoid the discriminatory and heavy laws that were put against Jews during that time in Germany. Along with some other Jewish families, the Hoffmann’s helped to establish a bank in New York City, allowing them to earn money to raise their family in a middle class setting. He was raised with care, went to good schools, wore fine clothes, and was given opportunities to have interests, one he deeply loved was music, but still faced prejudice due to his Jewish background. While his parents were progressive in thoughts of women’s rights, abolition, and sex education, they are old fashioned when it comes to one thing, religion; people ought to marry within their own religion, and after everything they had gone through, they had a great distrust in Christians.

Because they encouraged him to be interested in social and political matters, Mr. Hoffmann attends meetings and reads newspapers that not only express ideals he was brought up in, but helps to broaden his knowledge of things his parents wouldn’t normally talk about, and has friends from all different kinds of backgrounds. To him, America is the melting pot of cultures and the hope for a more unified world, which is something his parents disagree, thinking each culture ought to stay with their own, especially as an effort to preserve it. He got the best education he was afforded, and was expected to have a place in his father’s bank, but wanting to do something on his own merit, he used his money to buy a little music store and has managed it with great success. His parents see this as a hobby, which saddens him that they don’t seem to understand that he likes managing the store, but he lets it go for the time.

Once he became a young man, he decided to travel back to Germany to see what his parents’ homeland was like, wondering if things had changed then, and that was how he managed to meet Minna. He got lost and was trying to find his old home, when he asked a young lady to help him, and they hit it off wonderfully. Minna Bhaer is a kind and bright young woman, and shows him around the city, answering his questions, and when he commends her for how bright she is, she blushes and says that credit goes to her brother who is a great teacher. Inviting him to dinner, she introduces him to Friedrich, who was very welcoming to the young man, and they listened to the tales of America, just as they shared how Germany has become the country it is now since his parents left. They talk about music, philosophy, religion, and progressive ideas, which Mr. Hoffmann is grateful to meet like minded people as him.

Mr. Hoffmann had planned to stay only for at most a month, but he found that the warmth of the Bhaer home was too wonderful to leave so soon, especially of the company of the young Minna. One month turned to two, two to four, and it was very clear to Friedrich that a romance is blossoming between the two. While he has no objections against his religion or taking her to America, he does grill him in how Mr. Hoffmann will take care of his bride, not only financially, but emotionally. Minna had told Mr. Hoffmann about how their father walked out of the family, and while she was too young to remember him and care that much, she shares that Friedrich still carries that wound, and he understands Friedrich’s concern of a possibility of Minna being abandoned by both a father and husband.

Mr. Hoffmann knew that there was a good chance that they would not accept her, may even disown him, but he loved Minna very much and explained that he had a store of his own that was doing well and would provide for them both, and whatever children they will have. Friedrich, satisfied that Minna would be taken care of, gives his blessings to the pair, and they marry in a civil ceremony in Germany before travelling back to America.

When Mr. Hoffmann tells his parents of his marriage, they are enraged that he would marry a Christian, when it’s his duty to marry a good Jewish woman. Because Jews go by the lineage of their mothers, not their fathers, they are upset that their children will not be “real Jews”, no matter what Minna tries to say or do to make it the whole thing fair to everyone. They cut him off, explain that he is dead to them and he never hears from them again. While he is upset his parents aren’t accepting of his choice, he doesn’t regret loving Minna, and they work hard the next year to make their store a success, and find that they are expecting.

First came Franz in 1859, named after their favorite composer Franz Shubert, then in 1961 Emil, a name shared by both of their grandfathers. Mr. Hoffmann sent letters telling his parents of each son’s birth, but received no reply and expected no visit, which did hurt him though it wasn’t unexpected. Despite his parent’s rejection, and Friedrich being on a different continent (that doesn’t stop him from sending gifts to the boys on their birthdays), the Hoffmann family was happy and proved that their love was stronger than everyone’s prejudice. After discussing how to raise the boys, Mr. Hoffmann insisted that they were raised Christian, as he felt it would make their life easier, but Minna assured that she would not let the boys forget that their father was Jewish, and if that they are free to make the choice as they grow up which they would rather be.

The nation becomes divided until ultimately a civil war breaks out, and because he finds the idea of slavery abhorrent and unable to stand by and watch injustice happen before his eyes, he joins the Union army. While Minna is scared to death he’ll die, she knows she has to be strong and admires him for his conviction. He’ll serve in the war for three years before he is killed in battle, and the news devastates Minna, who is now all alone. If it wasn’t bad enough that she lost husband, she was unable to say goodbye to him as he was buried with the other fallen soldiers in a hurry, and, because of a stipulation in the deed, it means the store and their apartment above now belonged to his parents, which meant they turned Minna and her boys out in the cold without a second thought.

Minna takes her boys to a small and broken down apartment, which was all she could afford, finds a job that pays very little, just enough to take care of her boys, sacrificing her own wellbeing to make sure they stay healthy. This comes back to bit her as she feels greatly ill, making her write to Friedrich, telling him of everything that has happened and expresses her wish that should she die, her boys should be raised by him in America, like their father died. Friedrich hurried over to America, and is with her for a month trying to take care of her before she passes away. Now, with two young boys in his charge and new to America, Friedrich must do what he can to raise them well, and finds luck in the Kirke’s boarding house, where not only does he find lodging that is significantly better than where his sister was living at previously, but they offered him a job as a tutor to help take care of them.

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting this outcome, but the more of the deep dive I did of history, this backstory just came to me naturally. What do you guys think?

[libraryofva]

Recent Acquisition - Ephemera Collection

A Good Resolution! Resolved, to give the American Railroads a square deal in all matters of legislation and regulation, and an opportunity to compete for business on equal terms with other transportation agencies. (Signed) American Public. Association of American Railroads, Washington DC., 1939

Ink blotter

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers would take up legislation this week to impose the deal that unions agreed to in September.

“Let me be clear: a rail shutdown would devastate our economy,” Biden said in a statement. “Without freight rail, many U.S. industries would shut down.”

In a statement, Pelosi said: “We are reluctant to bypass the standard ratification process for the Tentative Agreement — but we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt.”

Pelosi said the House would not change the terms of the September agreement, which would challenge the Senate to approve the House bill without changes.

The September agreement that Biden and Pelosi are calling for is a slight improvement over what the board of arbitrators recommended in the summer. The September agreement added three unpaid days off a year for engineers and conductors to tend to medical appointments as long as they scheduled them at least 30 days in advance. The railroads also promised in September not to penalize workers who are hospitalized and to negotiate further with the unions after the contract is approved about improving the regular scheduling of days off.

Hundreds of business groups had been urging Congress and the President to step into the deadlocked contract talk and prevent a strike.

Both the unions and railroads have been lobbying Congress while contract talks continue. If Congress acts, it will end talks between the railroads and four rail unions that rejected their deals Biden helped broker before the original strike deadline in September. Eight other unions have approved their five-year deals with the railroads and are in the process of getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.

If Congress does what Biden suggests and imposes terms similar to what was agreed on in September, that will end the union’s push to add paid sick time. The four unions that have rejected their deals have been pressing for the railroads to add that benefit to help address workers’ quality of life concerns, but the railroads had refused to consider that.

Biden said that as a “a proud pro-labor president” he was reluctant to override the views of people who voted against the agreement. “But in this case — where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families — I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.”

Biden’s remarks and Pelosi’s statement came after a coalition of more than 400 business groups sent a letter to congressional leaders Monday urging them to step into the stalled talks because of fears about the devastating potential impact of a strike that could force many businesses to shut down if they can’t get the rail deliveries they need. Commuter railroads and Amtrak would also be affected in a strike because many of them use tracks owned by the freight railroads.

The business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and National Retail Federation said even a short-term strike would have a tremendous impact and the economic pain would start to be felt even before the Dec. 9 strike deadline. They said the railroads would stop hauling hazardous chemicals, fertilizers and perishable goods up to a week beforehand to keep those products from being stranded somewhere along the tracks.

“A potential rail strike only adds to the headwinds facing the U.S. economy,” the businesses wrote. “A rail stoppage would immediately lead to supply shortages and higher prices. The cessation of Amtrak and commuter rail services would disrupt up to 7 million travelers a day. Many businesses would see their sales disrupted right in the middle of the critical holiday shopping season.”

A similar group of businesses sent another letter to Biden last month urging him to play a more active role in resolving the contract dispute.

On Monday, the Association of American Railroads trade group praised Biden’s action.

“No one benefits from a rail work stoppage — not our customers, not rail employees and not the American economy,” said AAR President and CEO Ian Jefferies. “Now is the appropriate time for Congress to pass legislation to implement the agreements already ratified by eight of the twelve unions.”

Business groups that have been pushing for Congress to settle this contract dispute praised Biden’s move.

“The Biden administration’s endorsement of congressional intervention affirms what America’s food, beverage, household and personal care manufacturers have been saying: Freight rail operations cannot shut down and imperil the availability and affordability of consumers’ everyday essentials,” said Tom Madrecki, vice president of supply chain for the Consumer Brands Association. “The consequences to consumers if a strike were to occur are too serious, especially amid continued supply chain challenges and disruptions.”

Clark Ballew, a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, which represents track maintenance workers, said before Biden’s announcement that the union was “headed to D.C. this week to meet with lawmakers on the Hill from both parties. We have instructed our members to contact their federal lawmakers in the House and Senate for several weeks now.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Neil Bradley said Biden was correct in advocating for the deal already reached. “Congress must do what it has done 18 times before: intervene against a national rail strike,” Bradley said in a statement, and he called Congress enforcing the deal agreed to by railroads and union leaders the “only path to avoid crippling strike.”

The railroads, which include Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CSX and Kansas City Southern, wanted any deal to closely follow the recommendations a special board of arbitrators that Biden appointed made this summer that called for the 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses but didn’t resolve workers’ concerns about demanding schedules that make it hard to take a day off and other working conditions. That’s what Biden is calling on Congress to impose.

[follow-up-news]

After roughly 20 years of development, HrSR (higher-speed rail)* with speeds up to 110 mph will be in effect as of June 26 on Amtrak’s 284-mile Chicago-St. Louis corridor, on Lincoln Service and Missouri River Runner trains (300, 301, 302, 305, 306, 307, 318 and 319), as well as on the Texas Eagle. Trip time is reduced by 15 minutes from 90-mph run times and 30 minutes from 79-mph run times—less than two hours from Chicago to Bloomington-Normal and less than three hours to Springfield, with end-to-end St. Louis-Chicago schedules of under five hours. HrSR was a joint effort of the Illinois DOT, Amtrak and primary host Class I Union Pacific, plus numerous consultants led by WSP USA. Other host railroads on the corridor are CN, Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), and Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA). The project involved track upgrades, double-tracking, PTC and other infrastructure improvements. The shorter schedules, combined with new Siemens Charger diesel-electric locomotives and state-owned Amtrak Midwest Venture cars, also from Siemens, “we are completing a full makeover of this corridor service,” said Amtrak President Roger Harris. Project cost came in just under $2 billion, including $1.66 billion in funding from a 2010 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant.

[vi-sigoth]

How can I connect with my ancestors paganism when I do not live on my ancestors land? I feel like European pagans always talk about feeling a connection between their land and their gods but the land I live on has only been tended to by Europeans (Christian) for a few hundred years. For thousands before that it was a different people with their own gods

Gonna page @schreeuwekster if she would like to hop in, I feel like she’s a lot more eloquent on the subject than I am.

This is something that A LOT of American and Canadian pagans struggle mightily with. If I live on the North American continent, will the gods hear me? Are they still present? Will the land spirits hear and answer me and accept my offerings? Trust me when I say that I’ve seen a lot of people ask similar questions, and this is my thoughts on this:

The gods are omnipresent. They are not confined to a certain place, but they will always be there for their children. They follow their people. It doesn’t matter if you’re a German in Germany, in Austria, in Switzerland, stationed at a military base in a foreign country, having an extremely long vacation in Argentina (ahaha…) the gods will always be there for you. There are tons of pagan groups in the United States, and from what I know, though I’m less familiar, in Canada too. Would there be such a massive revival going on now if people didn’t feel their presence? There’s groups all in Appalachia, a large one in Wisconsin. There’s plans for a Freyhof in the PNW right now. Stephen McNallen (the founder of the Asatru movement) just went and oversaw a ceremony in Nebraska held by pagan military veterans. Europeans have traveled and migrated from one land to another since their inception; our story is one of movement, by foot, by horseback, by chariot, by boat. Iceland, a place that most people associate very heavily with Norse paganism became the place we know now because Norwegian men and their British Islander wives came there and made it so. Do you think the Norwegian men that went to Iceland had any fear that Odin and Thor wouldn’t come with them if they left their homelands behind? They didn’t, and neither should you.

About a month ago, my husband and I met a man wearing an unusual looking Thor’s Hammer. He told us that his friend made it out of an alligator scute, which, if you aren’t familiar, is one of the hard osterderms along an alligator’s back and tail. When you think of Thor, you don’t really think about Florida. You think of Germany and Scandinavia and maybe England. You think of gray, stormy skies, snow, mountains, and pine forests. But why shouldn’t Thor be here in Florida? His Swedish children build the railroads here. His English children, my ancestors included, farmed, hunted, went to war, lived and died here. I’d like to think he’d be right pleased and downright delighted at the thought of a terrible great lizard conquered and killed and dedicated to him.

[quixoticrobotic]

so like i've always associated scotty dogs with the 1930s bc the great depression american girl has a little pin of one on her christmas dress

so basically i headcanon hadestown ceberus is just a scottie dog. maybe even just three regular scottie dogs like i could have gone for railroad bull police dogs thats OBVIOUS what theyre going for

but nah i think one year hades impulsively got three dogs and so at the train station persephone is swarmed by exited puppies and hades is like "Yes, this is your Mother" to the dogs