The Addendum "I tried to write shorter ~Mark Twain
route99west.com/addendum
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.
Powered by Blogger
OrBlogs Listed
Feeds & Etc
Atom Feed
RSS Feed
Add to Technorati Favorites
Quick Subject Jump
Book Reviews
Review: Approaching Nowhere
Housekeeping Note
Review: The Call of Trains: Railroad Photographs b...
Review: Here There Nowhere
The Ephemeral 'Net
Meet the G9
Portland Streetcar Obamamania
Bachelor's Special #1: Instant Noodles Review
Week in Review... in review.
Week in Review, Vol. XI
January 2005
July 2005
January 2006
February 2006
August 2006
September 2006
November 2006
January 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
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
RailPixCritic
One person's musings on railroad photography, focusing on discussions of specific images or groups of same
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
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. IX
Thanks to the good old viral hokey-pokey, this installment of Week in Review is a tad late. It seems everybody has caught it, or some variant of it, this week. Ugh. I'm still recovering but I'm at least functional again. I also managed to donate a significant amount of money to the "keep Ricola making cough-drops" fund. Thank you, Switzerland! Labels: Civics, Photography, Portland, Public Policy, Publishing, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
A lot of streetcar noise this week. Portland Transport on Monday broke news that the new loop for the Eastside had made the President's budget. Metro is now seeking public comment on the project.
The AP story, however, has not gone down well with some:"But the federal agency said that the Portland transit agency, TriMet, has to develop better ridership models and show the benefits of the streetcar system to get past the last hurdle for funding in 2009."
The Portland Streetcar, Inc., is not a division or affiliation of TriMet. Although TriMet has handled making federal funding applications for them, they are not responsible for planning decisions on the streetcar.
Meanwhile I can't help but feel that the grand expansionist visions of the streetcar system are eventually going to come into direct conflict with TriMet's extensive bus system. Why would the agency view streetcars on their bus routes, taking their riders and their fares, with anything other than alarm and anger? It makes no sense to build a competing system in the city; neither TriMet nor PSI will be healthier for it.
The remaining transportation roundup jumps all over the place. Also on Monday, a MAX train struck a TriMet bus downtown. Thankfully there were only minor injuries to one person on the bus, and no injuries to anyone else.
On Tuesday the Oregonian published a story on the design of the Columbia Crossing project. The story laments how plain the new bridge will be. At $4.2 billion, I'm not sure if all this debate will be moot anyway.
On Wednesday the Roseburg News Review put up a rather amusing Op-Ed on the closure of the Central Oregon & Pacific's Coos Bay line. The name "Snidely Whiplash" is used. Why do I feel that I need the voice of Edward Everett Horton to read the story out loud?
Friday brought an amusing story in the Big O about the TriMet hearings in Salem."One senator read a constituent's e-mail message.... [suggesting] replacing MAX with express buses that have drivers who can monitor riders."
It's nice to see the politicos are now being blatant asses by reading ludicrous comments such as that. After investing how many hundreds of millions -- its probably over a billion -- in federal and state funds, we should abandon our investment and convert back to buses? All so we can have a false appearance of safety? Or, well, you know, we could add, uh... enforcement?
Lastly, my friend Dan the history man should be happy to see that the Figo House will be saved after all.
A few other odds and ends of news. The Seattle P-I will have to treat online reporters the same as paper ones, which amounts to a victory for their unionized workers. Also in the Emerald City, some artists have created custom audio tours of the Seattle Art Museum. I wonder if we could do one for a walking tour of Portland? And in an "only in Portland" story, we now have a Vegan stripper joint.
In the photography world, Whiskey Texas has a lot of new stuff. Grain elevators, buZ blurr, and anti-sagging-pants billboards. Strange combinations, Wes.
There's also another essay up from Martin Burwash. Nice stuff as always.
That's all for now. Take care, folks, and if you catch what I've got, I recommend a lot of green tea and miso soup.
Back to Top | Back to Contents
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Happy 1027 Day!
Okay, one last post before bed. To all my friends and former colleagues over at THE Magazine of Railroading, Happy 1027 Day! Labels: Journalism, Media, Publishing, Railroads, Transportation
Back to Top | Back to Contents
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Another one bites the dust?
I've mentioned before the transition that magazines in the railroad enthusiast or "railfan" field have been undergoing. Now, general historians will be mourning the loss of a publishing giant in their niche, American Heritage. Labels: Internet, Journalism, Media, Publishing
Founded in mid 1950s, American Heritage was a highly successful general history rag distributed on newsstands nationwide. According to the New York Times, who reported late last week about the magazine's closure:The circulation is currently 350,000, or as high as it has ever been, and hundreds of those readers can still be reliably counted on to write in arguing about the true causes of the Civil War or, as happened recently, to point out that the author of a World War II article doesn’t know the difference between the M-1 rifle and the M-16, which didn’t come in until Vietnam.
Sound familiar at all? Might the term rivet counters come to mind?
Yet publisher Forbes put the magazine up for sale in January and has had no offers. In the light of this, the company is shutting down production with the June/July issue. For the moment, the staff will continue to maintain the magazine's web site, but there seems to be no clear vision of an all-digital American Heritage either. Indeed, the internet seems to be part of the problem. Editor Richard F. Snow, quoted by the Times story, stated the case like this: "We're really a general interest magazine.... We don’t play to a history buff in any narrow sense -- like the Civil War re-enactors, for example. They can go on the Web and get thousands and thousands of hits."
Again, any bells ringing? Skim the NYT story. Aging readership. Attempts to refocus the editorial direction to a younger audience. Internet incursion. Falling off advertising sales. Patient determined publishers carrying the water.
Back to Top | Back to Contents