late morning

  Honestly Beagles sometimes I wonder is there no poetry in your soul?  Is there nothing more to you than your truck and your furnace?  Do you never raise your eyes to contemplate beauty, like a sunrise or a sunset, or more immediately those crackerjack photos I posted a few days ago,  Probably just a couple trains to you, reminding you only of how a train once went through Cheboygan and how that effected the toilet paper factory.

Speaking of poetry, the previous paragraph was just a segue to get to the subject of poetry, because I know the dawgs love poetry and I wanted to insert a posting of mine from facebook and it contains some poetry.

Crept away from CNN and into bed last night before ten weeping and trembling. Woke up and listened to NPR and read the morning papers and just now tuned in to CNN just as Biden took the lead in Michigan, and now all those urban mail in votes are coming in and there is hope yet, brothers and sisters. As the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote:

Not a big Holy Ghost man myself, but you get the drift.

early evening

  That was late in the morning, and as the day progressed (starting a new post because cutting and pasting the poem had somehow moved my right tab leftwards.  Rather than fuck with the settings I am doing another post) our victory has become surer and surer.  You know I was aware how states with Trumpist state houses had forbade the counting of mail in ballots until after polls closed to please Trump who wanted to use that to steal the election.  But when they were counting the ballots CNN didn't emphasize which states were doing that, hence my premature despair,

But then as the day progressed and it was soon apparent that nothing like the great blue wave was going to happen the despair crept in again.  Mainly in that we did not take the Senate.  That is going to be a big problem going forward.  One which I am not going to go on and on about, because it is Indian summer right now, and I want to get out on the balcony.  There are some clouds near the horizon and I am expecting a beautiful sunrise.  I am expecting some beauty.

And since there can never be too much poetry let us hear from John Keats.

   "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Notice, not a word about furnaces or trucks.

late morning

How Can They Do That?

 According to my news app, the experts are already "calling" states a few hours after the polls closed.  This after other experts have been predicting that the results won't be known for several days yet because of all that mail in voting.  Last I heard, some states have reported that they already have had more mail in ballots turned in than they usually have total ballots cast.

We voted the old fashioned way today.  My wife and I went separately at two different times this afternoon, and there was no line either time.  We just breezed right through.  There were long lines in the 2016 presidential election, but our guys have since gotten more booths and redesigned the traffic flow in the room.  I suppose all that mail in voting took some of the pressure off as well.  

Our furnace guy came around this morning and put the permanent fix on our furnace.  The temporary fix has been working fine, but I feel better knowing that the permanent fix is in.

election day

 

When Old Dog cites the Norfolk and Western Railway can I assume that he is familiar with the work of O Winston Link, the most famous steam photographer in the world and his work with the Norfolk, the last railroad in the USA to be using steam in the mid fifties? 

As I was looking for photos to adorn the ivied halls, I was reminded of a lurid tale associated with this great man.  At some point, after his mission with the Norfolk made him a rich man he acquired his own locomotive and hired a man to keep it running who had an affair with his trophy wife, Conchita, and together they locked him in his basement and sold his photographs and pocketed the money.  

I am sure all these details are exactly write but while googling around I came across a documentary of this sordid affair https://vimeo.com/ondemand/photographerwifelover and there was a trailer and in the trailer was a much younger Judge Jeanine Pirro a wacky inhabitant of late night Fox crazy hour, as a DA, much more attractive and not noticeably loco.

That last item may not mean much to the dawgs, but when I come back from the Ten Cat on a Friday night a little too buzzed to do anything useful I tune into Fox and there she is older, more bloated, irate, and decidedly more bull goose looney than in her DA days.

I'm thinking of going out to the Ten Cat this Friday.  It will be a little warmer, maybe it will be okay in the beer garden.  I wonder what Jeanine Pirro will have to say then.

Big line at the polling place this morning, line not moving, don't know what is going on.  I'll come back later.

Big Blow in Beaglesonia

 Big windstorm in Northern Michigan yesterday.  There was a little rain and snow associated with it, but the big news was the wind, gusts up to 50 MPH on the Lake Michigan shore.  I don't think it blew that hard in Cheboygan, but it was enough to knock out our electricity for three hours.  Traverse City had so many trees and power lines down that some of their streets became impassable.  As of today's evening news, there were still thousands of households without power throughout the region, but only 260 of them were with our power company, which serves portions of three or four counties.  It was still pretty breezy today, but not like yesterday, only gusts of 20 MPH or so.  The good news is that the wind is predicted to be calm by morning, and no rain or snow for at least a week.

We weren't exactly freezing when our gas furnace was out, I fired up the wood furnace a month or so early.  We usually don't burn wood this time of year because it's too hard to control.  Also I'm a little short of wood this year and I wanted to save it for when it gets really cold.  

That guy who traveled 1600 miles to buy a 2017 probably wanted a stick shift, I seem to remember that was the last year they made them.  I wanted a stick shift too, but not that badly.  Now that I'm used to it, I don't mind my automatic at all.  They make them a lot better now than they did in the 50s you know.  

Monday Musing

And those huge engines are something else, and now about those streamlined versions of the art deco era?

No doubt about it, that's a mighty fine looking locomotive and I can tell you a little about it.  I happened to see a picture of that beauty while I was digging around for steam engines in general, and that is a Class J locomotive first built by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1941.  There were only 14 built, the last one in 1950 and most were scrapped.  There is one engine that was still running as recently as 2016, the No. 611.  The latest versions of the Class J were considered by many to be the most powerful passenger locomotives ever built, easily pulling a train in excess of 100 mph.  YouTube has hours of the 611 rolling through the countryside and it's a stunning piece of machinery, well worth viewing.

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I'm glad that Mr. Beagles was able to sort out his furnace problems and won't be freezing this winter.  It surprised me to read that, according to Google, gas furnaces have a life expectancy of only twenty years; seems kind of short to me.  The cast iron boiler in my parent's basement must have been fifty years old when it was finally replaced with the smaller gas unit, freeing up a lot of floor space.

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Nice shout out to Chuck Berry with the song lyrics, Uncle Ken.  I barely remember the song, and the word "coolerator" threw me; I thought it was a slang term for refrigerator.  And the Old Dog is wrong again.  Coolerator was the name of an appliance manufacturer based in Duluth, Minnesota.  There is some sales literature online and it's amazing how much inflation has occurred in our lifetimes.  In 1950, Coolerator advertised a 15 cubic foot chest freezer for $459.50.  According to the inflation calculator site that I use (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) that converts to $4,962.60 in 2020 dollars.  Today, you can buy a 14.8 cubic foot Frigidaire chest freezer for $599.00; that's only $55.46 in 1950 dollars.  What a world we live in.

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Speaking of inflation, Mr. Beagles may be sitting on a good investment with his new pickup truck.  The market for used pickups is going nuts; one guy flew nearly 1600 miles to buy a 2017 Silverado 1500, the basic 2 door model.  That's a long way to go for a used truck, I think.

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I'll be glad when this election is over, the text messages I'm getting are driving me crazy.  Besides the messages pushing Trump and Biden, I'm getting them for poll watching, ballot initiatives, and MoveOn.org.  I keep blocking them and they keep coming.  Sometimes technology sucks.