October-December 2024 Archive

4 November 2024

Every four years, I go through an utter nightmare. The United States goes through a presidential election...throwing ballots before the hands of racist voters in overrepresented rural states, then filtering them through the undemocratic Electoral College, practically inviting the Republican Nazi Party to seize power and destroy everyone I care about and everything I hold dear. And every single time, the stakes get even higher than they were before. Always! NO exceptions. And I can barely function...

• What about the climate, for crying out loud?! There's not a single issue more graver than this. This upsets me too much for words.
• What about the war on Ukraine? It makes my heart sink to think of this innocent country being crushed under the boot of Putin and Tr*mp. Moldova and the Baltics would surely be next.
• What about the fucking Supreme Court? The unaccountable, undemocratic entity that already gives the fucking fascists absolute control on a case-by-case, time-delayed basis?
• What about Project 2025? Tr*mp's custom-made how-to manual for irreversibly destroying the world's climate, driving America's queer population underground, dismantling every public institution, undermining the authority of blue states, and crushing them in a vice?
• What about the ongoing trans genocide? And a world where being fined $10000 for using a washroom is the new normal?
• What about the fucking institution of democracy itself? The political system of the far right is divine-right monarchy, as described in the Bible...and so would the political system of the United States, if the fucking fascists get their way.

If every single decent person in the States gets off their duff and votes for Kamala Harris tomorrow, we'll have dodged six bullets in one fell swoop. But I can't count my chickens yet, knowing just how many unhinged Christian fascists there are in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and a multitude of other states that can't decide if they want to be on the right or wrong side of history.

There is some cause for optimism. Democrats outperformed polls in 2022. Evangelicalism is shrinking, irreligion is growing, and irreligion now outnumbers any single religious group in America. And the reasons for this growth are a direct repudiation of the Religious Right. Negative treatment of "gay and lesbian people" was the reason 47% of people left the church; congregations becoming "too focused on politics," another 20%. But numbers are only good if they translate into votes.

I did my part, voting for Harris and senator Tammy Baldwin on the stripped-down absentee ballot that permanent overseas voters get. I wish that I could do more.

I also wish I could pretend that I (or anyone else) was insulated from the world of the U. S. of A, and didn't have to worry about any of this stuff. But climate change and hate websites don't stop at national borders. In Canada, we have a whole stead of Tr*mp wannabes in the wings, starting with Doug Ford and Pierre Poilievre. Our institutions might be more resilient than those in the States...but I can't begin to pretend that I'm "safe" from the influence of American White Christian Fascism just because there's an overworked CBSA official standing between us.

And fuck the "accelerationist" BS that some (invariably straight, white, cis-male) "lefter-than-thou" nitwits throw about. Look: It's easy to make flippant comments about burning the system down. I've said them myself when I've felt overwhelmed!! But as long as reform is possible, cooler heads must prevail. What happens when you destroy a system without any concrete plans to replace it with a better one? You get a void where the biggest bullies rise to the top...and people die. Germany might be a more secular and liberal country now than it was 100 years ago. But was that outcome certain in 1924...or even 1945? Absolutely not. Was it worth dragging millions of innocent people through fascism, holocaust, and world war to achieve that end? Fuck no.

Vote for Kamala Harris. All of you! For the sake of humanity!

I don't even know how I can say it any clearer.

29 October 2024

10 things my grandparents never said...

...that would have meant everything in the world to me if they had said them, out of their own volition, before 2017:

1. "Black lives matter."
2. "Trans lives matter."
3. "No person is illegal."
4. "We voted 'no' on Wisconsin Referendum 1 in 2006."
5. "We received a Christmas card from Tom Petri, and we tore it up and threw it in the trash. We don't need bigots who derailed ENDA and shilled for DADT in our house."
6. "Abortion is healthcare, and no one should ever be forced to give birth against their will."
7. "Both of us voted for Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold, and so did everyone else in your family. Including your cousin Jack."
8. "It disgusts me that a racist abuser like Bill O'Reilly, who goaded George Tiller into being murdered, is rewarded with a national television platform. And it disgusts me even more that many seniors our age support the views of people like him."
9. "Any person who voted for climate change denier Ron Johnson voted for the ecocide of life on earth. It's not even POSSIBLE to be more sociopathically evil than that!!"
10. "I realize that your grandmother and I haven't always been the most knowledgeable or proactive about human rights and social justice issues, and you're hesitant to trust us. Here's what we've been learning, reading, and doing to rectify that."

24 October 2024

The Roads of Mercer County, West Virginia

The farther away I am from West Virginia, the more I want to write about it. No, I don't totally understand it either...

With the railways done, the time seemed ripe to reinvigorate the other half of that project from 2019. What did I do? Well, I think I outdid myself...

• 38 new pages (yes, thirty-eight pages!) devoted to explaining every known County Highway and Delta Road.
• Vector maps drawn or updated for every single "road tree" in the county. (48 in all...)
• All primary highway pages updated, with known errors corrected and road names for fractional spurs verified from Google Street View.
• Many pictures added. (Thanks, Krystle!)
• New primary highway page added for WV 108.

5 October 2024

The Railways of Mercer County, West Virginia

Back in 2019, I debuted a project called The Roads and Rails of Mercer County, West Virginia.

I never finished it. After a monthlong burst of productivity in which I explored the history of the county's twelve major highways, I was burnt out. So I let Part 1 stand by itself, and resolved to tackle Part 2 whenever the time was right.

In September 2024, the time was finally right. So I started digging through old maps and timetables, and pieced together the story of the railways that were built through Mercer County in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The story of the people who lived there, worked there, and rode the rails through now-bygone towns and camps with names like "Ada," "McComas," "Hiawatha," "Beeson," and "Dott."

Mercer County was blanketed by two major railways: The Norfolk & Western and Virginian, which competed for freight contracts and eventually merged. But there were also short-lived, short-line lumber railways that snaked their way up from riversides to ridgetops via hairpin curves and switchbacks. And there were city and interurban streetcar systems, linking Princeton and Bluefield with around 30 kilometres of commuter track.

This was an engrossing project, and I'm happy that I was finally able to give this subject the justice it deserved.