A Stitch in Time

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Time Portal Identification Made Easy

I added this Alley Portal in Menlo Park California

to my own Portal Life List, just last week

Even experienced Time Travelers may have difficulty recognizing a time portal when they encounter one. When is a train not just a train? How does a B.C.E. transporter differ from a run-of-the-mill station house? Which alleys lead to Never Land and which only provide the quickest path to the household garbage cans?

I recently caught up with Biding Mytime, a senior staff member with the well-known time travel service "Portal Pilots". Captain "Bide-a-wee", as she's known to her colleagues, who consider her a woman ahead of her time, was happy to share some of the characteristics that will help even a newbie observer, such as myself, spot a few portals to add their Personal Portal Spotters Life List.

The Captain was just folding up a report from maintenance when I entered the Portal Pilots Millbrae BART Station.

“Now look around you,” the good captain intoned with an expansive gesture. “From the outside, you might guess this place is nothing more than a metro station. But you’d be dead wrong!”

I studied the assorted time travelers waiting in the Comman Era (C.E.) terminal. Clearly this was not the typical Bay Area Rapid Transit station. A Roman matron was dangling a squalling toddler, who’d clearly traveled way beyond his comfort era, over the edge of the escalator hand railing. A medieval monk in the corner was chanting to himself, or maybe into his Blue Tooth device, while a surcoated devotee of Joan of Arc, clearly waiting for the next transport back to the crusades, engaged in a little light-sword practice in the corner. I moved gingerly away from the knights combat-zone-of-choice and offered to buy the captain a beverage.

Over a friendly cappuccino, latte, double foam, hold-the-pease-pottage Captain Bide-a-wee explained some of the spotters tricks she’s picked up over the years.

“It’s like this, Hon. Time friendly transport mechanisms abide by certain rules.” She wiped some foam off her metal breastplate, and took another long thoughtful swallow. “See first off, you gotta remember that time is of the essence.”

I nodded, trying to look like I was understanding the lesson.

Then she pointed to a large digital clock on the wall. “So you might think that would take you some where.”

I nodded again, actually thinking I was getting somewhere with my studies.

“So, is that clock a time portal?”

She snorted and choked on her drink. “Well of course, that thing is no portal.” She studied it for a moment, clearly turning over in her mind, the best techniques for instructing the utterly clueless. “Fair to say there are clocks that’ll get ya’ where you’re going. But that ain’t one of ‘em. And why? Can you tell me?”

I studied the large, ugly gray time piece in a bemused fashion. “No, I suppose it’s not-“

She thwacked one leather covered knee pad. “That’s right, Hon. ‘Cuz after you stare at that awhile, you can’t say you had a lovely time, can you?”

I agreed I could not.

“But this place, “ she pointed to the station walls. “Is a legend in it’s own time. So,” she turned one palm up indicating the obvious, “here we have an obvious portal.”

I took another sip of my own drink and considered her explanation. “I’ve got an old carriage clock at home. It doesn’t run anymore, of course, but I’ve always had a feeling about it.”

She thumped her cup on the counter and gave me a broad grin. “Now you’re thinkin’ straight, girl. That somethin’ that’s stood the test of time.” She unfolded, and spread out, the report she’d tucked into the capricious leather bag, tied belt-like to her waist. Now look-a here at the portal types our gals will be inspecting in the area this week.”

I studied the maintenance engineers list.

bridge

canyon

ladder

path

alley

creek

Standing Stones

cave

trail

painting

mirror

clock

train

station house

“How many Standing Stones do you find in the San Francisco Bay Area?”

She grinned and tapped her nose with a knowing wink. “You’d be surprised!”

I was just about to suggest I buy her another drink when the voice of the gate agent came over the loud speaker, announcing, “Time is ripe.”

The captain jumped suddenly to her feet with a clash of breastplate against the back of the metal counter, that resonated throughout the station. “Well, Hon, there’s no time to lose, time and tide wait for no woman. Good luck with the spotting. Just remember to take your own sweet time.”

A woman ahead of her time indeed! A few minutes later she disappeared through the doorway marked Time Flies, Staff Only. I was a little disappointed not to spend more time with Captain Bidingtime, but time, after all, is money.

Mabel's Really Bad Idea

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Families: Dear Martha

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Oh! Hard Times, Come Again No More....

Stephen Foster

Short Shot of Beethoven's 9'th

Turkey’s in the Pot and All’s Right With the World

for a little more turkey'liscous detail, click above

My husband’s idea of Dante’s Inferno is being forced to smell a turkey cooking. It’s not that he’s allergic to it. He just doesn’t like it. He will consume some white meat once a year on Thanksgiving. After that he may be convinced to down a little stir fry with leftover meat. Pretty much the rest is for me. I happily make myself a big pot of soup from the carcass and slowly consume it, remarking every few days on the delights of real turkey soup.

For the time being, I’m the supper-cooker in our house. My husband is a good cook, but his work is over-the-top right now. So, temporarily, I’m anointed. As long as nobody complains, I don’t mind. Y’all remember the Moose-Turd-Pie joke, right? (Good though!)

Last week, when I was feeling no end special recovering from my root canal, nothing suited me but turkey soup. Real evocative-of-my-childhood turkey broth, made from the bones of the fowl. OK, I make it in the microwave which never seems quite as real as the way my parents did it in a pressure cooker. My husband ate other things during my root canal recovery stage.

The challenge is that having made myself turkey soup with real bones, I have leftover turkey meat. I was MUCH too special to chew the meat while my mouth resumed it’s functions. And, being the children of depression-era parents, we can’t bear to feed the cats entirely on cooked turkey, not that they haven’t benefited.

There is one other thing Dave will eat made from turkey. That is turkey pot pie. I make it like a savory cobbler with a biscuit topping. He is quite partial to the buttermilk biscuit recipe ( substitute a little parmesan for the sugar and cinnamon) I use. In fact, I bet he would happily consume the substance my father delicately refers to as “horse pucky”, if it had a biscuit crust on top.

Being as it’s not actually Thanksgiving, Dave can’t bear the thought that he is eating turkey. So, tonight, we are having CHICKEN pot pie.

Hold the chicken.

High Speed Rail: Train is a Comin’

Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

Train is a comin’, Train is a comin’, Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

African American Spiritual

High Speed Rail (HSR) sounds great to most of us. Who can ignore current and future challenges when it comes to transportation? But must we recreate problems from the twentieth century?

Urban planners across the country work, to resolve the problems created by elevated rail structures typically, built between the early part of the 19’th century up until the 1980’s. Citizenry in places like Boston and Chicago, deal with problems created by these wide platforms that appeared like the tentacles of a giant squid from a Disney movie. Massive walls and roofs divided once flourishing communities, where trees and fresh air once flourished, children walked to school and neighbors of all ages walked easily to the grocery store, or socialized on an afternoon stroll. This past-times scenario sounds familiar, in fact it sounds like my own community today.

Of course these days, sane analysts and engineers don’t favor these type of urban constructions. They’ve learned from experience that these type of comparatively cheap, monstrosities lead to urban blight of the worst kind. It isn’t only the individual property owner who suffers when her backyard or entire house is consumed by the gaping maws of elevated rail tracks, it’s the entire society. Children and elderly neighbors can’t walk to school or the grocery store safely, or easily, anymore because walls below the elevated tracks have changed the outline of the town. Besides you wouldn’t want to anyway. The cops don’t have the resources to police the danger zones that flourish beneath the shelter of overpasses. Want a good place to meet up with your gang or shoot up? These constructions are the place for you! High track rail doesn’t tend to deposit a large, long-lasting fund for perpetual cleanup services needed within the area, and history has shown us that cities have typically lacked the resources needed to deal with the results. Could you design a better spot to attract garbage and vermin? Local business and industry suffers too. People don’t want to shop or work in a place like this.

As a matter of fact, communities across the country, like this one in New York, http://www.good.is/post/high_line_gets_off_the_ground/, are working to tear down, cleanup and rededicate these symbols of urban blight. It’s taking tremendous community efforts to turn these dangerous and unbeautiful community eyesores into parks and greenbelts. It’s clear that commercial, industrial and residential users have suffered where elevated tracks grew. But surely we’re a lot smarter than that now? I mean – we must have learned from experience, right?

Apparently not. The California High Speed Rail Authority thinks they know better. Out of four original plans for constructing a system for fast trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles, they simply chose the cheapest. The Feds put seed money on the table, and we need to grab it, and do something with it, while the grabbing is good. Seductive images of High Speed Rail, just like they’ve got in Europe!, will streak residents down south in two and a half hours. It’s only those NIMBY’s (not-in-my-back-yard-ers) whose houses back up on the new elevated tracks – five freeway lanes wide up and down the peninsula and eight wide at crossings - who aren’t willing to sacrifice for the common good. Ridership estimates? Sure everybody will be jumping on board, no matter what we charge ‘em! And the funding we still need to pay the lowest construction costs we can come up with? It’s in the bag!

Hey, you can count on us to know what we’re talking about. Our best people told us so. Just ignore that study released in June by the Institute Of Transportation Studies University Of California, Berkeley at the request of the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, “Review of “Bay Area/California High-Speed Rail Ridership and Revenue Forecasting Study” http://www.its.berkeley.edu/publications/UCB/2010/RR/UCB-ITS-RR-2010-1.pdf

Better public transportation - we need it. But we need it good and we need it done right. If we destroy the vibrant communities of the Peninsula in order to get it, then just who are we serving?

. . .

* Peninsula residents know it can be done better http://www.peninsularail.com/main/Call_for_Common_Sense/page63.htm The Peninsula Cities Consortium (PCC) If you want to stay on top of ideas and activities involving local people, sign-up to get the PCC newsletter. http://www.peninsularail.com

* Another regular e-newsletter is available from CC-HSR. Current “Hot Topics” at the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail (http://cc-hsr.org/) include: financial risks of HSR, report on HSR activities, and update on litigation. This group’s efforts to involve * Peninsula citizens in the Environmental Impact Report for High Speed Rail, led to it’s decertification. An excerpt from their site (http://cc-hsr.org/) reads, “The program-level EIR for the SF Bay Area was decertified in December as a result of the successful lawsuit. CHSRA had to re-do this EIR and accept new evidence and public comments. CC-HSR coordinated with peninsula cities, rail advocates, and the general public to make sure we built the strongest possible case under CEQA for a routing decision that didn't destroy our communities or undermine our economy.”

* A recent San Francisco Chronicle article talks about where we stand now in regards to building and funding

“San Joaquin award helps set high-speed rail's path”

o “…state high-speed rail officials say the decision on where to start building the 800-mile high-speed rail network has yet to be made.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/28/BAH11G3J0L.DTL#ixzz150dAb7Dj