the way the railroads run

When I was at Union Station with my fellow old urban hobo, we came across an Amtrak map which showed trains going clear up to Mackinac Straits.  Well not exactly.  Sometimes Amtrak partners up with Greyhound or some bus company and part of a route may be by bus.  The train parts were in red and the bus parts were in blue, and the route to the straits was in blue.  But I bet at one time there was a train that went to Mackinac.  Hell I bet if we go far enough back in time there was a passenger train, or at least an interurban that went to Cheboygan.  If I recall from the tales of Beagles there is, or used to be not long ago, a freight train that went to Cheboygan.

If a train goes through your town you can kind of tell if your town is higher and lower than the surrounding area.  An old railroader told me that they like to run trains at a steady speed to conserve fuel. They want to avoid the acceleration or deceleration that comes from going up and down hills.  So when a train goes through a town if the town is too high they dig a ditch and if  the town is too low they build a kind of ramp.  Champaign had a ramp and I know that the land was kind of low because it often flooded during heavy rains.  Does the swamp flood?  Are there parts of the swamp that are always underwater even in dry times?


I think there is pretty ample evidence that the lockdown is doing good.  Countries that clamped down early are doing better than those that didn't,  The state of Washington clamped down early and is doing much better than New York State which clamped down late.  I see where Michigan has a curve about as steep as New York's, but I am guessing that is the southern part of the state.  The prognosticators have been predicting that Chicago will be hammered, but so far, not so much.  When I went to the vet's to pick up some medicine for Buddy, I had to call ahead, give them my credit card, choose a time to pick up and call them when I was standing outside their door.  Somebody in a mask handed me the goods and we did not exchange any pleasantries.  It was not much different from getting a burrito from Chipolte.

The main internal means of communication here in the towers is the flyers in the elevator, advertising things like movies and game nights and committee meetings and flotsam and jetsam.  Now the only flyers up are about corona stuff.  I used to make up flyers for the social committee's activities and  would google New Yorker cartoons, generally for something seasonal to put into the flyers.  Even people who never attended would tell me how much they enjoyed the cartoons.

I thought I would put up like a weekly cartoon, just to, you know, bring a smile to faces in these grim times.  At first I thought I would look for corona cartoons, but you know that is just not funny anymore, so I settled on something less controversial.  I sent it down to the office, which you used to be able to just walk in the door and complain, my guess is that they mostly got complaints, but anymore you can only contact them by email, and I guess they are deciding whether or not to post it.

But I can post it here: