When the news is too horrific to even respond to

I first heard about it from my babysitter this afternoon. I’d had a pleasant morning, and was waiting for my son to come home. She said, did you hear about the train? Nope. I hadn’t been online hardly at all yet.

Last week, people on my FB feed — I’m not a full on rail nerd, because I could not give a shit about equipment, but I do actually take an interest in systems, and I love the history of railroads, particularly how they shaped our country’s legal and financial institutions, and the role they played in the development of our great nation — were taking the last run on the scenic route on Amtrak.

Today, a train derailed in DuPont, on the overpass over I-5. Halfway between Olympia and Tacoma, the southbound lanes of I-5 may not reopen for days. Three people dead. A hundred or more transported to a variety of hospitals. Usually if you are in Portland or Seattle and want to be in the other one and it is winter, you have choices. Right now, not so much. A friend’s husband is trying to figure out how he’s going to get home. And in all the anguish, I just really want to know how the hell are we still having 19th century style disasters in 2017, with a brand new Acela style service in the PacNW.

It looks like the answer is going to be pretty simple, and exactly the kind of answer that is deeply unsatisfying to people like me: a failure to communicate. That curve was a 40 mph curve. And it is quite possible that the crew did not know that, and were going the 80 mph that the rest of the route was spec’ed for. This Brand Spankin’ New segment HAS positive train control. Which has not yet been turned on.

The NTSB will surely produce a detailed and comprehensive report including suggestions on what to do differently next time. Which is good.

But this hurts a lot right now.

Monday’s Activities Include: train, book group

I had a lovely walk with M. I watched NCIS:LA and TRMS. The Rachel Maddox Show from last Friday was one of the best I’ve ever seen — she got a ton of legal experts with really relevent experience and asked a lot of great questions, some of her own, some from the audience. It was awesome.

I read _Holidays on Ice_, by David Sedaris, for book group. The first one, the Santaland Diaries, was really great — I enjoyed it a lot, while recognizing that Sedaris has The Memoir Problem in job lots (it didn’t happen that way, but I “remembered” it happening that way, because it makes for a better story and I have a personality disorder, is one way to think of the Memoir Problem). Everything after that is appalling. People who give their sons away to be raped and murdered. A vicious critique — including fat-shaming and the R word — of elementary school holiday pageants. The woman who lies about murdering her grandchild in the laundry and framing her husband’s Vietnamese daughter for it in the holiday letter. THESE ARE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY. Santaland was so much fun, I kept thinking, surely the next one will be better.

Nope. Read “The Santaland Diaries” and fucking stop. Yikes. You know, or just avoid David Sedaris. Choices!

Today there was a horrifying derailment of an Amtrak train. I’ve posted about it separately. I’m sort of used to the disasters that have a big impact on me being ignored by the rest of the news cycle (cf. Pulse Orlando happening the same weekend as the Grand Floridian incident). But this time, there wasn’t any specific alternative disaster to suck all the air out of the room from the one that I was the most freaked out about. Just the holiday season and the usual political circus.