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is an occasional journal of Oregon, from arts and books to public policy & transportation.
All content © 2006- by Alexander B. Craghead, except where otherwise noted.
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Other Notable Blogs
Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow
Jack Bog's Blog
By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)
For Portlanders Only
"Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"
Good Stuff NW
Featuring stuff that is good in the NW
LOST Magazine
LOST Magazine is an online monthly magazine that combines elements of many other literary, online, and national magazines with a singular mission--to reclaim in writing lost people, places, and things.
Mapes on Politics
Way West of the Beltway
Outside Is America
A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.
The Photographers' Railroad Page
Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.
Portland Food & Drink
Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You
Portland Transport Blog
A Conversation About Access & Mobility in the Portland/Vancouver Region
PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media -- and booksellers
Rambling West
The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera
Stumptown Confidential
Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.
The Unauthorized Observer
Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.
Under the Weather
...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.
Urban Planning Overlord
A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.
VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.
Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.
World Scott
The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes
Blegs & Bargains
Amazon Book Wishlist
B&H Wishlist
My eBay Listings
Powell's Books Wishlist
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Trams! Trams! Trams!
Over at OregonLive, they are reporting about a new tram proposal, this time for Troutdale: Labels: Civics, Portland, Public Policy, Technology, TransportationMilwaukie-based Mass Tram America hopes to build wind turbines and solar-panel structures from Troutdale to Mount Hood. They would be used as power and infrastructure for a tram system that would carry passengers and freight -- ultimately nationwide.
The current Portland Aerial Tram was constructed primarily for the benefit of the Oregon Health Sciences University, in order to connect the existing "Pill Hill" campus with additional OHSU facilities being built in the South Waterfront redevelopment area.
This proposal, on the other hand, is nothing like that. It does not have the backing of heavy hitters like the City of Portland, or Homer Williams, or OHSU, nor would it involve world-class Swiss engineering firms to build the cars.
Instead, this is a proposal by a "privately owned" (read no-one was stupid enough to invest in it) aerial tram company based in, of all places, cosmopolitan Milwaukie, Oregon! The company, known as Mass Tram America, Inc., appears to be the latest in pie-in-the-sky transportation "consultant" firms that are attempting to huckster our small-time cities out of planning dollars. (See similar recent efforts by "consultant headhunters" regarding a wine train to McMinnville.) MTA has no experience designing or building trams anywhere. The company principles consist of a former realtor and coin-operated carwash operator, and a lower-level Bank of America sales staffer and interior designer. MTA has nobody with education and experience in transportation or manufacturing.
Their idea is to build a nationwide network of aerial trams carrying freight and passengers both. It's Jack Bogdanski's worst nightmare. (At least this time Vera Katz isn't playing cheerleader.) The trams would utilize modified former Boeing airframes as tram cars. The ironic thing is there is some precedent for such an improbable design: see the Mount Hood Skyway, which operated using converted busses.
Still, you can't help but feel that if these folks at MTA were approaching somebody like the City of Portland or Metro, they'd be laughed out of the building before they even got a chance to talk to the decision makers. Troutdale, though, seems to be entertaining them, as if MTA really had the ability to do more than put pretty watercolor design concepts on an amateurish website.
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Grammar Nazis, Unite!
Christopher Hitchens has this piece in Slate about the latest grammarian marketing fad: the word "you": Labels: Writing....It reminds me of the exasperation I used to feel, years ago, when one could be accused of regarding others as "sex objects." Well, one can only really be a proper "subject" to oneself. A sentence that begins with I will be highly solipsistic if it ends only with me, and if the subject is sexual, then the object of the sentence will be an object. Would people rather be called "sex subjects"? (A good question for another time, perhaps.) Or "sex predicates"? Let us not go there.
Those who were/are not college writing majors probably won't find it that funny. Or maybe they will, especially the first bit about standing in line at Rite-Aid. Ugh.
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Monday, April 9, 2007
Privatization and Public Infrastructure
From an unlikely, conservative source, Forbes.com has a very interesting piece by Nicole Gelinas about the need of capitalist societies for publicly funded infrastructure, and how the U.S. is falling down on this duty in the face of calls for privatization. Labels: Civics, Public Policy, TransportationConservatives think the private sector will mend the nation's crumbling infrastructure. They're wrong.
I am a conservative who thinks that conservatives and liberals alike have blown it on one of the nation's most important issues: infrastructure spending. While politicians find new ways to spend money on Medicare even in the face of a looming entitlement crisis, our nation's roads, bridges, airports and dams are crumbling. Roads and bridges may be boring, unsexy. But they are the backbone of tomorrow's capitalist economy. We ignore them at our peril.
Some conservatives may reason that if there were really a problem, the private sector would step in and fix things in pursuit of profit. Isn't that how it works in a capitalist society? Indeed, the private sector could play a bigger role. But it can't replace rational public planning and investment.
A refreshing, thought-provoking read. We would be fortunate indeed if such pragmatism were to return to American civics.
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Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Chris' other blog....
Chris Crook also has a railfan blog over here. Check it out, nice stuff on there. Labels: Photography, Railroads
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New article published
Meanwhile, I'd also like to announce a new article publication. The May 2007 issue of TRAINS Magazines has an article by myself and Dan Haneckow titled MAX at Night. It's a 6-page photo essay focusing on what happened behind the scenes at TriMet's MAX Light Rail Service. Labels: Journalism, Photography
Many thanks go out to Mary Fetsch at TriMet for working with Dan and I over the last two years of this project. It's been a long process but I think it turned out quite nice. Thanks also go to Jim Wrinn, Editor at TRAINS for taking the risk to run a photo essay on transit; to Kathi Kube, TRAINS' Managing Editor and the project editor for this story; and to the Art Department at the magazine, who made our story and photos look so good.
Last of all, but not least, thanks to Dan who came up with the brilliant idea and who soldiered through the all-nighter (and the long writing process!) with me.
Look for the magazine on newsstands near you starting this week. You can also order it direct from Kalmbach Publishing at 800.533.6644, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Central Time.
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Thanks Jim!
I've added The Rookie Year to the site at last. Many thanks go to Jim Wrinn, Editor of TRAINS Magazine for giving the permission to make this possible. The story also has a small image of Harold Highballs, a painting I created specifically for this story. I am thinking of writing a piece on creating this painting sometime in the near future. Stay tuned. Labels: Journalism, Watercolor
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