This is a lonely picture, indeed. It's from some asian bbs - all pictures of trains, or train tracks, train stations, mostly looks like china, or Japan. Wonderous thing, this web, with such specialized little nooks and crannies to explore. I have always been fascinated by trains, especially old steam locomotives. Goes along with my love of the old west (American). We americans have a fundamental ambivalence about "the west" - It forms a large part of our cultural mythology of rugged individualism, and boundless adventure, but it was also an era of great violence, hatred and misery - an adventure that came at a great price. The frontier was effectively closed, when the last spike was driven on the transcontinental railway, in the 1870's. While there were still some very wild places out there, even into the early 20th century, we were well on our way to becoming the heavily industrialized, hyperdeveloped country we are now. We still treasure our myth of the wide open spaces, but they are dwindling fast. Still, you can get pretty lost in west, which I plan to do.

Some cool pics, having nothing to do with each other, or anything. It's wierd that these huge, metal behemoths, battle ships, were the state-of-the-art for about 30 years, and then totally disappeared, as soon as they figured out how to drop a bomb from an airplane. They proved totally defenceless against air power. Now airplanes are pretty much obsolete, given the accuracy of ground to air missles. Oh well. I read a sci-fi book recently about Martians invading (an update of War of the Worlds), in which the Martians sent a power disrupter in advance of their invasion fleet, which fried all computers and modern electronics on the planet, all at once. This technology exists now, although perhaps on a more narrow scale. This rendered obsolete all our advanced weapons. In a twist on the original HG WElls book, the earthlings finally were able to bring down the aliens, by introducing them to antibiotics. (They were germ-based lifeforms, very slimy and disgusting!). In the original, I believe, the Martians caught cold, and died.

I'm not sure what relevance the Nazi pic has, except it's a cool pic. No, I am not a Nazi sympathizer - quite the opposite- though I do find that period of history a fascinating study in social pathology. Also, the uniforms and weapons are cool. The 49 Ford looks like one my Dad had in the early 60's. It was the car I mainly learned to drive on. With a non-syncromesh transmission, and 3 on the column, it was quite a job. My first day out driving alone, I got stopped for driving too slow. Then I got stuck on a one-way bridge, and didn't know what to do. Foretunately, in this days, the cops were a little more patient, and just gave me a warning to try to keep my wits about me a bit more.

My 7 yo granddaughter, Meghan, built this snowman on Monday, when they had a rare snowstorm in Raliegh. Greatest snowman I ever saw.

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot, according to Al Franken. Where does this guy come off squabbling with our elected officials, and why do they dignify him with their attention? The guy is a media wonk, and uneducated slob, with a big mouth, who has no official standing of any kind. I'm sick of people giving so much credence to these media people, especially the right-wing types, who think they can dictate what goes on in this country. They had their chance, for 8 years, an only succeeded in piling on massive debt, getting us stuck in two foreign wars/occupations, and ruining the economy. It's time to do our thing, and ignore the negative big mouths. Guess I told them.