Heard on a train

I hate driving. About two years ago, I changed jobs to from working at a Metro East hospital to working for the WashU School of Medicine, which is on the other side of the river from me. Since my day job is more than a half-hour drive from where I live (we moved from O'Fallon to Belleville late last year, but it didn't help), I ride the train to work. It's a great way to catch up on my sleep (I have alarms set to wake me before my stop). So, yesterday afternoon I was on the train as usual, when suddenly there was some loud banging along the bottom of the carriage, between the Memorial Hospital and Swansea stops.

I never found out what caused the banging, but it damaged the train, which almost immediately came to a hard stop. The operator tried to get it moving a couple of times, but the train only went a couple of feet, shuddered slightly, and stopped again. A couple of passengers muttered about getting out and walking, but I knew that was not going to happen (Metro St. Louis would never allow it). The conductor got out and looked under the train. A few minutes later, the train going in the other direction passed us in the tracks for the opposite direction. Then, after a few minutes more, a train going in our direction also passed us on those tracks. I wasn't watching the clock, but since the trains come every 12 minutes, and there would be delays from cross-tracking, I knew we had been stuck for at least 15 minutes.

Then a woman walked by me, talking about how her three-year-old might get stuck at home by themself. I believe she was the only one who actually asked the conductor to be let off so she go get to her child, but she was told no. She walked back to her seat.

The conductor went to the back of our car to try something, and we moved backwards a little, but that was it. She returned to the front. Another Metro employee appeared on the walking path a few yards from the train, on the other side of the fence. She couldn't reach us, of course, but she and the conductor exchanged a few words. Two more trains passed us, one in each direction. It had been close to half an hour now.

The mother of the three-year-old walked by me again, and I heard groans and sighs of aggravation from a few passengers around me. The mother again asked to be let off the train, and the argument was briefly heated. The mother again returned to her seat, accompanied by a couple of more groans, disparaging comments whispered to neighbors, and stares.

Finally, a train pulled up on the opposite-direction tracks, and stopped. We were evacuated onto the second train, and finally on our way again. The relief and anger on the mothers face as she got off at Swansea was easily visible.

I rarely see such a lack of sympathy toward a worried parent. I wonder if it was, at least in part, due to her being black.


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"I thought she was going to stab me"

There was a disagreement at our worksite at the end of the day. People my company hired to clean up some leaves were blowing onto a smallish vacant lot across the street, and the people next to the lot were highly annoyed.

The neighbors were dressed in worked clothes; perfectly normal people who were angry. However, they were black. Therefore, the white workers were apparently scared the whole time. One of them told me afterward that when the first neighbor left her house, "I thought she was going to stab me".

I'm sure the worker doesn't believe he is racist. He just thinks every angry black person is likely to stab him.

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Exploring the urban prairie

I work in East St. Louis, and on occasion move around the city from time to time either as a part of my job, or just to get a bite to eat. So, I get to see a fair share of urban prairie. As an urbanite, I find it rather depressing. I'll say a little more about it below the fold.

There is an interesting variety to the prairie. Sometimes the grass is so thick and high you'd never know anything had been built there at all. For example, along 13th between Exchange and Lynch there are multi-lot sized sections of meadow, which currently feature some wild, pretty, blue flowers (as of yesterday, anyhow). Other times, you can still see large patches of asphalt or concrete that have not yet successfully been buried, such as along State street between 81st and 85th. Presumably, much of this land belongs to the city. So, not only does the city need to pay for whatever upkeep there is on the property (the grass does need to be cut every month or so, at least along State Street), but it brings in no revenue. As more and more land becomes deserted, it becomes harder to support basic services for the remaining residents.

I wonder how long this can continue. Unlike East Coast cities, we still don't have land shortages here in the Midwest. So, O'Fallon, Shiloh, Troy, etc. are all growing, talking about getting new interstate exits, etc., while land much closer to St. Louis languishes. Eventually, the USA will have enough population pressure that this land will be used again. I wonder how long that will take.

Some of the land is apparently going to community gardens. In the next 50 years, we'll see full-scale farms? Can the latest 10 million help reverse the trend? I wonder if I will se a turnaround in my life time (based on family history, another 40 years or so).
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Keeping the kids in a bubble

I probably won't mention the Illinois Family Institute very often on this blog. For the most part, their particular flavors of intolerance and woo don't interact with the subjects I like to write about. Once in a great while they'll put up some bland global warming denialism, but mostly it's just politically slanted tripe and homophobia, and there are other bloggers who are really passionate on those topics. My rant is below the fold.

However, Laurie Higgins decided to direct her focus at my kid's school, and in particular at the Challenge Day program they are bringing over. Before I go on, there are two things you should understand about O'Fallon: we are the dead center of the most conservative area of St. Clair County (many residents are current or past Department of Defense workers, as Scott Air force Base is quite close), and our school system has plenty of money (we have 2 new schools built in the past 2 years). So, we really don't need some conservative wingnut protecting our family values, we already have an elected school board that is almost as right-wing anyhow. I'm not going to pretend I have enough information on the program to evaluate its true value, and am skeptical of any week inducing a life-changing experience on people (shy of physical trauma), but if this program was really just some touchy-feely lib-fest, it would not have been funded.

Of course, Ms. Higgins has to pull out some made-for-right-wing expert testimony, and her choice is the book One Nation Under God, a book described as "...a literary version of the thankfully defunct TV show "Crossfire"' and 'They are also waging a dated war against an imagined army of censorious liberals, ... It is culture-wars kitsch'. This of course makes them fabulous sources for a blog devoted to those culture wars.

Fortunately, we get to find out the real problems directly from Ms. Higgins. She quotes from the website:

Challenge Day successfully addresses some common issues seen at most schools during our school programs including cliques, gossip, rumors, negative judgments, teasing, harassment, isolation, stereotypes, intolerance, racism, sexism, bullying, violence, homophobia, (emphasis added) hopelessness, apathy, and hidden pressures to create an image, achieve or live up to the expectations of others....Be challenged to celebrate the diversity of ALL people.

Note that I did not add the emphasis, nor did the goals of Challenge Day. The emphasis is being added by Ms. Higgins, because that's the stuff that's really concerning. Not that she approves of stereotypes, intolerance, sexism, or homophobia. Just because she thinks children should be pulled from school when teh school allows protesting homophobia does not mean she supports it herself, no siree. She just doesn't think children should be exposed to other children opposing homophobia. You know, because being exposed to homophobia-opposition will be so damaging for the kids.

Ms. Higgins, your attention is not needed, productive, interesting, nor welcome.
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