BIG DAYWas your “Columbus Day” celebration some kind of a big bust again this year? I’ve never been one to put a great deal of either effort or money in a set of hours culled out of the month of October to either the honor or the blame for discovering this side of the planet Earth.
I have never become used to a government which can butt in without even as a much as a “How ‘d do, Miss Agnes” and changes the dates around so holidays don’t happen on the day intended. In fact, I missed it entirely this year. “Columbus Day” would be today on my wall calender. I was well into Monday before I found we had not received a single “application for credit cards” or “refinance now...” It finally sank in with me – we were celebrating a holiday and there would be no delivery of mail. “Holiday for what? I asked and a confident voice replied “Sumpin’ about Memorial Day, they say...!” So much for the official observation of Columbus Day 2005 at our household, except two days later when I looked at the wall colander that October 12 is to be remembered as being “the first day Observatories” I looked back a few days and, sure enough, I had missed Columbus Day which had been celebrated this year on Monday, June 10th which is also “Thanksgiving Day in Canada”. That's so close to ours. It’s a shame we didn’t get together and agree to have the same date. Ours used to be set on the last Thursday of the month of November, but F.D.R. Get both honored and blamed now for setting it up a week or two earlier to provide a larger “envelope” for Christmas shopping.
I think the most humiliating change-of-date thing that can possibly occur in a family is one that deals with family groups. Having fallen away from regular churchgoers. They all arrive at the church and each of the children pushes into the crowded pews, sorry to be late and getting located during loud singing of the loud opening hymn roars to its conclusion and immediately the Pastor raises one arm. Every worshiper finds his or her place as he proclaimed firmly the words the words of Benediction marking the end of the church's first seasonal worship service under Daylight Savings Time!
I have seen in happen. There is no better time for forgiving; for compassionate understanding than at such a moment. We know that we can all fall short of what is set for us do to Not one of us is perfect. We all fall short of the wonders we are here to perform.
A.L.M. October 12, 2005 [c504wds]
LACK OF TRUST Among the various wrongs which exist in our nation today one disturbs me more than others. - the obvious lack of trust. It can affect our future political and social well-being in so many ways.
I suppose there has always been a bevy of fault-finders about in previous eras but today they seem to be more. We used to hear about people of opposing views; today we speak with them. We, talk to them about today's problems and both sides listen better, too. Now, in a time when communication has blossomed and bloomed with abandon - radio, TV, photographic imaging, plus the Internet and associated computer presence where ever we may go. We, literally, take our entire world of knowledge and information along with us to solve any and problems which the world round us might devise, in the form of disks and computerized presentations coming to halls where color, action , sounds and seeing can all used to gain and to hold legitimate territory. Less and less do we hear about loyalty to set company, the largest, the oldest, newest. The old-established firm can look ahead to discover what the future holds and to ascertain our degree of trust we have in the computerized model it would have us live by.
How can we continue to set our sights by trusting individuals, firms, companies, groups, associations, armies, or when the must trust the ultimately a computer somewhere.
Do we need a "Dr. Phil"" nation-wide investigation to help us realize we work for a "thing,"? Where must our loyalties be centered? "Mine is better than your" and worse yet -"Yours it better that mine - unfair!"
If you have vague feeling that you may not really belong to the present day world or business and industry check on your deep down gut-feelings about computers.
A.L.M October 11, 2005 [c331wds]
HAVE THEY GONE? Does the train come to Charlottesville, Va.?
I didn't know but I overheard that a railroad passenger train runs though Staunton three times each week, so that accounts for three Charlottesville visits each week. It may be some north-south traffic is still being offered, so there would be a few more stopping a Charlottesville, Va. on eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Who knows what trains start or stop where these days?
More important, perhaps ---”who cares?”
Railroading lore has been been handed over to the RR Hobby people who seem to see a fairyland version of railroad's golden era. They have fabricated glorious tales of adventure and romance so it is often difficult to get a picture of what railroading was really like.
Being romanicists at heart, the “roadies” have long ago reached a point where they are relating a fine series of stories which have become a type of “historic fiction” in today's literary nomenclature. They tend to place emphasis on all of the many good things about rail travel of a prosperous era, and to diminish any qualities which may have proved to have been troublesome, costly and, at times, even unplesant.
The best preserved relics of the era can be seen today in our museums and theme parks and it is good they are being remembered in other art forms, as well. There is now an entire wing of Ameican folk music devoted to the railroad songs we have sung. One voicei among those who specialize in railroading songs is a folk singer by the name of Bill Haroff, Staunton, Virginia. He stands tall as a man who has captured and now holds the true feelings of the railroading times in his agile voice and fleeting fingers on guitar, mandolin and the old-time favorite among railroaders – the “five-stringed banjo.”
A.L.M. October 10, 2005 [322wds]
